Colleges Offer Students Free Bikes

A note from the dean: "Welcome to college, freshman. Here's your dorm room key, here's your class schedule and here's your new Trek mountain bike."

Believe it or not, that's what increasing numbers of students are hearing on college campuses across the United States when they sign up for classes. Pressed to manage limited parking space and clogged campus arteries, administrators are looking for new ways to manage an old problem. And one solution being tried in more and more places is to offer free bikes to new students, in hopes they'll leave their cars at home.

The University of New England in Maine and Wisconsin's Ripon College are two that are providing bikes; other schools have variations on bike sharing/bike lending programs. The key is to do it in a way that makes the student responsible for the condition of the bike they use.

The New York Times had an interesting article on this. You can read it here.

What's your opinion of this? Do you think this will encourage college students to ride instead of using the car? And what happens come winter? Comment below.