The Office of Sustainability (OOS) and Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE) this week teamed up to sponsor the campus' first-ever Bike Week to promote biking as a healthy and alternative mode of transportation.
The week's main event took place on Wednesday at the Mayer Campus Center, where various bike-related organizations and companies set up information tables. Participants included Tufts Bikes, Tufts University Police Department (TUPD), the folding-bike company fBIKE and the state-sponsored travel options program MassRides, among others.
"We wanted to do something to actually promote biking because there are so many bike-related organizations in the area," said Fannie Koa, OOS communications and outreach specialist. "I feel that a lot of our resources are pretty underutilized, so we started planning this with TIE.
The event showcased TIE's BiciGen, a bike mounted on a wooden platform that generates electricity when someone turns the pedals. The BiciGen had been sitting at the OOS office for some time after a former student built it, Koa said.
At the event, OOS and TIE also handed out a bike map of campus to show cyclists how to avoid Tufts' largest hills. Koa said that the map, developed by another former student, will hopefully be available at the Tisch Library circulation desk and the Tufts bike shop in the Crafts Center.
Tufts Bikes, a student-run organization that loans bikes to students, performed free bike maintenance for students and provided information about its bike share program.
"What we hope to get out of it is publicity and hope people will see that biking is an easy way to get around," Tufts Bikes president Kevin Stine, a sophomore, said. "Biking is important because it's fun, makes you healthy and is cheap."
fBIKE, a company that sells $249 portable bikes to commuters, brought several examples of its product and allowed students to test-ride the bikes.
"The idea is for anybody who lives, commutes or works in a small space," Jeff Dieffenbach, fBIKE president and co-founder, told the Daily. "If you want to take it on a subway or train, you can do that during rush hour."
TUPD Sergeant Duane Weisse manned an information table during the event, helping students register their bikes and providing safety tips.
"It helps us when [bikes] are registered so that we don't have to cut their locks off," he said. "It helps us in recovery as well. If a bike does get stolen, a police department would call us with that number and we would be able to track that back to the student."
Koa hopes that Bike Week will encourage more students to use bicycles, noting that the OOS will evaluate the event to determine if it will be repeated next year.
"If it's well received, then I think we really should look into making this a more annual thing," she said."
