Phase 3 of the project was to inventory all the bicycles at Round Barn. With the help of Nathaniel Nevins and Sathish Ravipatti, Sarthak Prasad finished the inventory of all the impounded bicycles by August 15, 2022.
Sarthak Prasad spent nearly 50 hours during the tagging, confirming, and inventorying phases of this project.
All, We’re quickly approaching zero stock for refurbished bikes. One particularly eager patron bought two of our more expensive road bikes back-to-back last week. Thankfully, we received 3 bikes in very-good-to-great condition that should—fingers crossed—be on the sales floor for Wednesday.
We’re in the beginning stages of clearing out abandoned bikes. Approximately 200 will go to CBC/TBP so that’ll help our inventory. The abandoned bikes at the rack in front of the bike center were cut this morning, cleaning up and clearing space for folks to lock there. We’ll be better able to see if any donations have been left, as well.
The numbers:
Visitors: 21
Sales: $1,646.75
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $1,025
B-a-B: 1 for $50
Tires/tubes: 15 for $113
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator
All the abandoned bicycles were impounded and transported to the Round Barns by Parking department by July 29, 2022. Parking would send the F&S TDM department an invoice for this project.
Illinois Newsroom article by Sydney Wood about "University of Illinois tags students’ bicycles with stickers for campus bike clean-up." Read the article attached or read it online at: https://illinoisnewsroom.org/the-university-of-illinois-tags-students-bi...
217Today broadcasted an interview about the removal of abandoned bicycles on campus as part of the campus clean up process. You can listen to the interview at the 2:10 minute mark in this episode.
Also, check out the Illinois Public Media WILL episode for July 15, 2022 here: https://will.illinois.edu/217today/episode/217-today-to-atone-for-racial...
Any bicycle that still had the orange tag, were confirmed to be abandoned and marked in the ArcGIS Field Maps application. This phase was completed by end of June. Parking was asked to remove all the abandoned bicycles after the July 4th weekend. Parking started removing bicycles after July 9th.
Fox news picked up the F&S Announcement about Abandoned Bicycles on 6/30/22. Read this article below or online at: https://foxillinois.com/news/local/u-of-i-dont-leave-your-bikes-behind
Also attached is the pdf of this announcement.
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U of I: Don't leave your bikes behind
Thursday, June 30th 2022
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCCU/WICS) — The University of Illinois Urbana Champaign is dealing with an abandoned bicycle problem.
Each summer the staff with the University of Illinois Facilities & Services and the parking department identify and collect unwanted bicycles on campus.
Any bike left on university property gets an orange sticker that reads, "Remove this tag by 6/30/22, or your bicycle will be removed."
If the bicycle is still there on Tuesday, July 5 it will be impounded.
If your bike has been removed and you'd like it back, email bike@illinois.edu with your bicycle information.
If you have an old bicycle you'd like to donate, you can drop it off at the Campus Bike Center (51 Gregory Drive, Champaign) or the Bike Project of Urbana (202 S. Broadway Avenue, Room 24).
Click here for more information.
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Initial tagging was completed by June 20, 2022
Started the tagging of all bicycles left on campus on June 4, 2022.
Brandon Alexander, from Parking, printed and delivered about 3000 orange sticker tags for us to use for the abandoned bicycle project. Sarthak's intern added the "Remove by" date and the "Tag ID" to each of these tags. See attached the tag
Sarthak Prasad worked with Chad Kupferschmid, from F&S FIR, to develop an electric way to tag bicycles on campus and mark them on a GIS based map. Chad developed the Field Maps application for this project. We would use it in three phases:
Phase 1: Initial tagging of the bicycles - Only Tag ID and Comments section available
Phase 2: Confirming the abandoned bicycles - New field (Abandoned or not) would be available
Phase 3: Inventory of the impounded bicycles - Once confirmed, the Parking department would remove the bicycle and transport them to the Round Barns, where Sarthak Prasad along with his intern will inventory all the impounded bicycles. During this phase, more fields - Make/model information, Bike Registration information, Serial Number information, pictures, etc. would be available
This app was ready for us to use by the end of May
All, The semester is over, and the students have left. For summer we’re down to just a couple of folks. And of course, Friday was super busy all day but we were lucky to be well-staff for the last day of the semester as staff report that it remained ASF (All Stands Full) until after close. We’ll see how busy we are this week.
We’ve reduced hours to M/W/F in accordance with projected diminished demand and staff availability. As we get more staff hired/onboarded and demand is there, we’ll bump hours back up.
We received 10 direct donations last week with I’d guess about half being students.
The numbers:
Visitors: 38
Sales: $854.60
Bikes (refurb): 2 for $370
Memberships: 3 for $90
Tire/tubes: 7 for $61
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator
All, Last week we got inundated with donations. I counted 8 bikes donated on Friday alone. That doesn’t include wheels, tires, and parts that we received as well. We’ve got nearly half a dozen bikes in the queue that once on the sales floor will free up some space for more donations.
Our friends at TBP are hosting another Kids’ Bike Giveaway event for July 17th. We have a dozen or so bikes we’ll be able to contribute to that event. That’ll clear up some more space, too.
This week I hope to be able to start a new student worker.
The numbers:
Visitors:
Sales: $103.75
Tire/tubes: 4 for $31
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
Donate your bike! Campus Recreation’s Campus Bike Center (CBC) accepts used bikes. If you are leaving campus and you have a bicycle that you do not need, please donate it to the CBC at 51 E. Gregory Dr, Champaign. CBC refurbishes bikes and cleans them up for reuse. Please consider donating your used bike before leaving campus! Call us at (217) 333-0241. FREE water bottle while supplies last.
51 E. Gregory Dr, Champaign, IL 61820
Sarthak Prasad • Facilities & Services
All,
Pretty slow week. Had the iCAP sustainability celebration on Tuesday, which was great. Always fun to see/hear from other parts of campus that are working towards a better future for our campus. On the flipside, I had the displeasure of reporting a dangerous F&S driver that same day and then a dangerous MTD driver on Thursday.
Todd came by and cleared out scrap on Friday which was welcomed.
As of this morning, I communicated with Working Bikes that we will not be doing our annual abandoned bike donation as Parking did not collect bikes last spring, due to COVID, and thus we have no bikes to donate to them. It hasn’t been decided/communicated whether Parking will collect later in the fall/winter or wait until spring. This will also negatively affect how many bikes we’ll have for sale next spring, as the pool of available bikes is lower. But of course, most of the abandoned bikes were being donated and for sale numbers were always more dependent on our ability/time to build more than a dearth of bikes.
The numbers:
Visitors: 11 (7 UIUC-affiliated)
Sales: $225
Memberships: 4 for $120
Misc parts: 8 for $55
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager
All,
Mike, a semi-regular at the old shop, walked in on Friday for his appointment, looked around and said, “What’d you have to do to get upgraded to such a nice spot?”
Just another positive review of our new space.
I coordinated with Parking to do more frequent pick ups—but smaller loads—of abandoned bikes, which should allow for a better flow of bikes in and out of the bike center. This should be more manageable for myself and my staff going forward, as well.
This week is a Campus Sustainability Celebration on Tuesday, a CBC staff meeting Wednesday evening, and warm weather to close out the week, which usually equals some more traffic, but we’ll see if that holds during a pandemic.
The numbers:
Visitors: 14
Sales: $178.20
Memberships: 4 for $120
Misc parts: 4 for $40
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager
All, Things were slow-to-comfortably-busy last week. A new employee started. On Tuesday I picked up 30+ bikes from JSM. Only about 1/3 of the bikes were of any quality. The rest we have been steadily scrapping. Consequently we’re pretty maxed out on our scrap bins. One of the good bikes was built up in record time on Friday. A Structural Engineering PhD student rolled in around 2:30 – 3 and finished building the bike a little after 5:30. Most of the bike was in good condition. While he worked I spoke with him about getting engineering students into the Bike Center to try some physical, practical applications to their studies. While he couldn’t get students in to CBC himself, it was encouraging that he agreed it would be a good idea.
I spoke with my Parking Dept contact. Abated bikes have been collected. There are significantly fewer collected than in prior years. Whether that is due to VeoRide, education/awareness, or simply a diminished area of collection (due to construction), it’s hard to say. Bottom line is less work for me and my staff!
This week I’ll be taking Friday afternoon off. I’ll be out of the office on Monday and Tuesday of next week as well. Chris will cover hours. Next week’s report, accordingly, will happen on Wednesday.
The numbers:
Visitors: 75
Sales: $1,282.90
Bikes (refurb): 6 for $810
Bikes (B-a-B): 2 for $50
Memberships: 2 for $60
Tires/tubes: 17 for $89
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
All,
This past week was abbreviated due to the sweltering and oppressive heat. We closed Thursday and Friday. The rest of the week wasn’t too busy, either.
I had a training with a new hire, purged some old parts, and worked on shop builds.
This week I’ll pick up “quite a few” bikes from JSM that they have ready for us, keep purging some of the old junk, and safety check the student-built bikes.
The numbers:
Visitors: 42
Sales: $724
Memberships: 2 for $60
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $475
Bikes (B-a-B): 2 for $55
Tires/tubes: 7 for $$43
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
All,
The one day last week that it wasn’t blazing hot was the one day we were really busy. But we’re always at the whim of the weather. Other than the one busy day, it was business as usual.
We got a new giant fan delivered by the maintenance crew which has been a great help. Keeps things manageably cool in here. Don, the guy we did a bike exchange with, brought us a case of bottled water from Meijer, which was also awesome.
The real big news was the bike we were able to return to its rightful owner. A woman donated a bike that she said was abandoned in front of her apartment. With assistance from Durst, we were able to track down the original owner who came and picked it up on Friday. It was a good start to the weekend!
Outside of the regular day-to-day I’ll be training a new hire and looking to rig up some weatherproofing for the garage doors to keep it a little cooler in here as we look towards the super-hot end of the week we’re expecting.
Numbers:
Visitors: 75
Sales: $582.75
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $301
Membership: 3 for $90
Tire/tubes: 11 for $60
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center
