Bike Church/Yellow Bike

Here is a dream for the Bike Church/ Yolo / Yellow / Yollow Bike program to get things started:

The bike church has lots of Huffys and we can get many, many more. We could convert them into reasonable yellowbikes by stripping off the derailleurs and shortening the chain to a reasonable ratio that would be fine for tooling around Davis.

Then we need to place a big DIY basket on the handlebars, and brand them. Imagine if we got our hands on some cheap steel tubing. We could weld the tubing along the top tube and then bend it up behind the rider to create a flagpole. On the top would be welded a piece of sheet metal with our logo and some simple use rules in a bright color. This may add visibility while simultaneously helping to prevent theft.

Using the portland project as a reference, we could have rules such as:

1) Common Use Bike 2) Ride at your own risk 3) call xxx-xxxx for repair/pickup 4) GPS enabled. Steal at your own peril.

Just joking about the last one. However, there are some important concerns with 'free' bike programs:

-Resources required to field a large fleet of bikes -theft is ALWAYS a problem -bikes need to easily fit a wide range of people -what is the liability problem? do we exist? does anybody truly exist?

These are some issues that we should think about in terms of total cost:

-Not painting the whole bike ($$$) -Do we need new tires/tubes? -New Brake Pads? -How to cheaply/effectively/unmistakably BRAND the bike as a yollowbike?

2007-01-21 21:12:02   I thinkpainting the frames is important, but we could do a tapeless spray job on them (making wheels and tires less salveagable) and use yellow BBQ paint- BBQ paint sticks to ANYTHING, without primer :) Tires and tubes we cna mostly get form inventory for now.... a serial number etched into each frame or soemthign makes it easier to know which bikes are where and which one's have repair needs (and provides a fun community game where you can blog the bike locations — more fun == less theft) Junk frames can be cut and the tubing used to weld D rack frames on the front (I can show with a drawing) which will make the bike VERY distinctive and lets us bolt on a random type of basket or carton. Pretty Easy to do and solves a bunch of problems. —PopeChristof

I just figured out about the bike church, I would like to help out in some way cause it's an awesome place, and having the yellow bikes is a good idea for Davis... —StevenDaubert

2007-01-22 15:40:02   Pope, nice thought about the front rack. I agree that a tapeless paitjob could deter theft. —TaiStillwater

2007-01-22 21:57:19   If people are serious about doing this, the bikes should be presented in very good condition to the public. —TusharRawat

2007-08-13 12:44:07   I would love to get in on some infrequent but steady bike repair work such as the yerllow bikes. count me in to help with whatever... —PxlAted

2008-04-03 17:03:37   Painting the bikes is good, but participating bikers should also be encouraged to wear some sort of visible "bike pass" to identify themselves as program participants/supporters. Nothing too extreme, maybe a helmet sticker or colored leg band. These could be sold to help maintain the fleet and develop a community of riders. —CoreyOwens