Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 5/15/08 Section: News

Corrections appended

When junior computer science major Vlad Tchompalov first walked into his QUEST course, he was just thinking about getting a good grade. But when the semester ended, he walked away with more than an A - he had become a co-owner of an innovative bike rental program, weBike.

"We're going to make this happen, and we want to make it happen here," said Tchompalov, who is one of six students who conceptualized weBike, a bicycle-sharing program that prides itself on eco-friendliness, innovation, community and fun.

The students' plan to install several enclosed bike stations around College Park that will store easy-to-ride, semi-powered bicycles.

The group is also in the beginning steps of talking to Department of Transportation Services Director David Allen to see if he is willing to integrate weBike into the department's efforts to make the campus more biker-friendly. Allen said he is optimistic about working with weBike "as long as it all makes sense."

"We would like to learn more about what they are proposing," he said. "It's an interesting concept."

But Allen expressed concerns about weBike's willingness to install rental stations off the campus, where he said they are most necessary. Allen said if weBike's serving stations are confined only to the campus, it "doesn't necessarily help our effort to reduce cars on campus" and thereby makes it a less desirable choice as DOTS moves to revitalize biking at the university.

But junior mechanical engineering major Brad Eisenberg stressed that weBike is willing to go out of its way to meet DOTS' expectations and to not burden students with skyrocketing costs.

"Ideally, we would work with the university in some capacity, so transportation fees could offset the cost of this, so people wouldn't have to pay out-of-pocket," Eisenberg said, adding that weBike is considering including a free bike for everyone who uses the service for four years.

After completing a survey of more than 700 students, weBike discovered the majority of students were willing to pay $20 per semester for a bicycle rental program on and around campus.

But the group has no money now, and start-up costs look daunting, members said.

The bikes the company plans to use cost nearly $500 each, since they have an electronic infrastructure to help users get up steep hills. The weBike team said they were happy to find a light-weight, partially electric bicycle; if they hadn't found one, members said they would have designed one themselves.

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