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Projects Updates for Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

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  1. Abandoned Bicycles: Tagging and Identifying

    Associated Project(s): 
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

     
    Unwanted Bicycles Will Be Identified and Removed This Summer

     

     

     

    Don't Leave Them Out to Pasture (Or We'll Take Them) All unwanted bicycles parked on campus will be collected. Remove the orange sticker to avoid impound. Visit go.fs.illinois.edu/BicycleRoundup

     

     

    F&S and the Parking Department identify and collect unwanted bicycles left on campus at the beginning of the summer. 

    All bikes remaining on university property will be tagged this week with an orange sticker that reads, "Remove this tag by 6/30, or your bicycle will be removed." Any bicycle still displaying the sticker after that date will be impounded. 

    If you presently have a bike in a campus rack, shelter, or parking location, please remember to remove this sticker to ensure your bike is designated as active. Individuals who don't take this action and want to reclaim their bicycles later this year will be charged a $40 fee. All recovered bicycles must also be registered before being returned.  

    Donate Your Bike!

    Last year, almost 250 bicycles were retrieved during the annual roundup and stored as part of the Bike at Illinois reclaiming and donation process. Help reduce the roundup and preserve campus resources by donating your bike! 

    If you no longer need your bicycle, consider donating it to the Campus Bike Center (51 E. Gregory Drive, Champaign) or the Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign (202 S. Broadway Avenue, room 24). No appointment is required. Donations are tax-deductible, and bikes will be refurbished or recycled, with as many parts reused as possible. 

     

    Read the email online: https://emails.illinois.edu/newsletter/68/1492591568.html

  2. Tagging for Abandoned Bicycles Complete

    Associated Project(s): 
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    This past week, Sarthak and interns Emily and Max have been working on tagging bicycles on campus for the abandoned bicycles project. Today, the tagging portion of the abandoned bicycles project was completed. Across all blocks of campus, 665 bicycles were tagged. After June 30th, bicycles that do not have their orange tags removed will be collected.

  4. Ventilation System Installed and Electrical Work In-Progress for the Shipping Containers

    Associated Project(s): 
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles
    Shipping Containers for Bicycle Storage

    Ventilation systems were installed in each of the seven shipping containers last week and electrical work is currently being done to add power to the shipping containers. There are also hooks installed to hang bikes on one side of the wall in each shipping container. 

    Attached Files: 

  5. Weekly Update: Training new staff, Donated bikes

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Been slow but good here, as we’re in a lull between spring semester and summer sessions. Slow times allow us to provide better service to the folks that do come through, so that’s a positive.

    Training up new staff and trying to keep on top of builds/donations as the spring and summer clean outs have netted us a good amount of bikes. But of course no matter how many bikes we have for sale, we’ll sell out come August. A good problem to have, I suppose.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 31
    Sales: $841
    Memberships: 6 for $180
    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $335
    Tires/tubes: 10 for $72

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  10. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Apologies for the delay. Pretty uneventful week. I was out at a conference on Thursday and Friday. My staff handled shop hours on Friday without issue. Made some more headway in the abandoned bike pile but also got half dozen or so direct donations as well. So, we’ve got our work cut out for us this week in processing all those.

    I spent some time last week turning bars/pulling pedals on the bikes we do have here in an effort to maximize space. We’ll spend staff time this week checking over those bikes, so they can be earmarked for the Build-a-Bike program and be much easier to identify by staff and the untrained eye.

    We will be closed tomorrow for Juneteenth and reopen on Friday.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 6
    Sales: $366.50
    Memberships: 1 for $30
    Bikes (refurb): 1 for $90
    Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
    Tires/tubes: 17 for $125

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  12. Weekly Update: Abandoned bikes

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Shortened week with Memorial Day. Otherwise, business as usual. Subpar donations are still trickling in, so we’re able to continue to pass those along to Habitat. Took a week break on the barn bikes but will be ramping that back up this week. I believe the tagging of abandoned bikes on campus has begun, so we’ll likely get calls/emails about that in the coming weeks.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 28
    Sales: $656
    Memberships: 2 for $60
    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $365
    Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $60
    Tires/tubes: 5 for $55

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  13. Weekly update: Bike donations

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Last week, with the Bike Project, we were able to donate 20 or so bikes to a nonprofit church group that will send the bikes overseas. These were all bikes that would’ve otherwise been in the scrap yard, so it’s less work for us and helps keep more bikes out of the waste stream—a win-win! We continue to donate kids bikes to Habitat for Humanity as we do not have the storage space to keep those until our winter giveaway.

    Got a couple more new hires on board and learning the ropes.

    This week is business as usual as we try to replenish our sales stock.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 28
    Sales: $656.00
    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $$365
    Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $60
    Memberships: 2 for $60
    Tires/tubes: 5 for $55

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  14. Weekly Update: Donation, M/W/F hours

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Slow beginning to the week and a furious finish. Friday was busier than we’ve been in weeks, but we were also down some folks as finals were wrapped up for most people. Made progress on the abandoned bike pile. Habitat for Humanity’s bike rodeo has been a godsend, as we’ve been able to unload some kids/teen-sized bikes on to them in good conscience knowing they’ll be going to a similar cause. We’ve donated nearly a dozen bikes from CBC alone and will probably have more. We’ve received 14 direct donations from folks graduating or not using their bike, going back two weeks.

    This week we start our summer hours of M/W/F 2 – 6p.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 53
    Sales: $678.50
    Memberships: 4 for $120
    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $275
    Tires/tubes: 20 for $158

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  15. Weekly Update: Abandoned bicycles, new staff

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Big news of last week is the abandoned bikes. Bike Project folk and I were able to take an inventory of the bikes that are available and given the number of bikes—fewest in my tenure!—we are not partnering with Working Bikes this year. I communicated as much last week and no hard feelings. If anything, they’re happy to hear we have less bike waste—and they would know, they’ve got a 3 story building full of bikes.

    This week we have a couple new staff members starting here. We’ll do some off-hours training with them.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 40
    Sales: $1,030.50
    Memberships: 18 for $540

    Tires/tubes: 27 for $212

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  16. Unclaimed abandoned bicycles donated to the Campus Bike Center

    Associated Project(s): 
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles
    Campus Bike Center

    Following the deadline day to claim impounded bicycles, Sarthak Prasad reached out to Jake Benjamin, campus bike center coordinator, to inform that these bicycles are now considered donated to the Campus Bike Center and the Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign. See the email below:

    Hi Jake,

    The deadline to claim impounded bicycles have passed, so you can start checking the bicycles in the barn now. These bicycles are now considered donated to the Campus Bike Center and the Bike Project. I have the serial number information for almost all of those bicycles in the spreadsheet as well. We had about 240ish bicycles to start with and 24 bicycles were returned this year.

    Thank you,

    Sarthak

  17. Weekly Update: Busy times, Light the Night, abandoned bikes

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Light the Night
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Pretty standard week. Busy with some wait time on stands/repairs most days. Had a Build-a-Bike completed—always a good thing. My team and I did Light the Night on Tuesday at the Ikenberry Quad area. First time in a new location always gets us some looks and questions. Not as busy as we hoped but again, it’s not yet familiar to folks. No word yet on numbers. 

    We were dangerously overloaded on scrap by Friday, but Todd pick it up over the weekend—always appreciated.

    This week I’ll do inventory of the abandoned bikes to see what’s worth keeping. Of note: Easily the fewest abandoned bikes in my tenure. I think my first year there were over 500 bikes left over. Maybe bike shares are really helping that issue (and maybe creating others)?

    This week I’ll have two new staffers start. It’s apparently midterms, so reinforcements are paramount.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 62
    Sales: $1,122.50
    Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
    Memberships: 20 for $600
    Tires/tubes: 26 for $192

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  18. Deadline passed, final number of bicycles returned

    Associated Project(s): 
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    The period to reclaim impounded bicycles from summer 2023 has now passed. We had impounded about 240 bicycles in the summer and we returned 24 bicycles! That is a 10% reclamation rate, as compared to 5% in 2022. This was the least number of abandoned bicycles impounded ever on campus!

    All of the unclaimed bicycles are now considered donated. Sarthak Prasad will reach out to Campus Bike Center to let them know that they can start removing these bicycles. Since there are only about 200 unclaimed bicycles, we may not donate them to Working Bikes this year.

  19. Bike at Illinois Newsletter: September 2023

    Associated Project(s): 
    Bike at Illinois Website and Campaign
    C-U Bike to Work Day
    Light the Night
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles
    Lock Your Bike Right (LYBR)

     

    Facilities & Services

    Bike at Illinois

     

     

     

     
    Bike at Illinois Newsletter: September 2023

     

     

    Thank you for registering your bicycle! There are a few bicycle related events coming up in the Champaign-Urbana area, and we would like to invite you to participate in them!

    We, also, want to remind you to collect your bike registration sticker (shield) and attach it to your bicycle, if you have not done so already. There are, currently, eight campus and community Shield pick up locations. You will be required to show the Bike Registration Fee payment confirmation email and identification to collect a shield.

    Winners of Bike Registration Raffle will be contacted soon as well!

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Upcoming events

     

     

     

    CU Bike Month 2023 t-shirt

     

    		  

    Bike to Work Day

    Ride your bike to campus on Thursday, September 14, and get a free T-shirt! Welcome stations featuring drinks and snacks will be available from 7 to 10 a.m., at eight university locations. Participants will also be able to interact with other bicyclists and city planners about potential enhancements to the bicycle network and future programming. First-time riders are encouraged to take part and learn more about the C-U bike community.

    You must preregister at https://go.fs.illinois.edu/BiketoWorkDay and bring your bicycle to get this year's shirt (shown). The event will move to September 15, should inclement weather arise.

    Light the Night – Free Bike Light Giveaway

    The 16th annual Light the Night is Tuesday, September 19, from 4 to 7 p.m., at Alma Mater Plaza, Hallene Gateway, and the Ikenberry Commons Quad. You MUST bring your bike to get a light set. Approximately 1,100 bike light sets will be available. In case of severe weather, the event will be rescheduled for September 21.

    Remember, bike lights are required by Illinois law when riding at night. Volunteers are still needed for the event.

    Reclaiming an Abandoned Bike

    F&S removed almost 230 abandoned bicycles on campus this summer. If you left your bike and want to reclaim it, email bike@illinois.edu and include where it was located, the make/model, color, and serial number, if possible. Bike registration information or other documentation will be needed to prove ownership (e.g., pictures). More information is available at https://go.fs.illinois.edu/ReclaimBike. If the bicycle wasn't registered, that step must be completed before retrieving the bike. The deadline to reclaim your bicycle is Friday, September 22, 2023. Any unclaimed bikes will be donated to the Campus Bike Center and the Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign to help support bicycle programs and initiatives.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Bike Safety: Always lock your bicycle

     

     

     

     

    For nearly 60 percent of the bike thefts reported in the past year, the stolen bicycle was not locked. Always lock your bicycle to a bike rack to keep it safe. Watch this video on how to properly lock your bicycle. Watch other educational videos created by Bike at Illinois.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Thank you so much for all your support, and learn more about the Bike at Illinois program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! Contact us at bike@illinois.edu for any questions.

     

     

     

     

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