In the spring of 2001, Environmental Quality (EQ) released 9 used bikes to campus – bikes that had been maintained and painted yellow -- so that they could be freely used by members of the College community. Despite some mechanical and distribution problems, the program was immensely popular and at the end of the semester 7 of the original bikes were collected and stored for the summer.
With funding from the Inter-Commons Council (ICC), individual Commons and various other sources, EQ put 15 bikes on campus in the fall of 2001, after having them tuned by professional bike mechanics from The Bike Center in Middlebury. Public Safety supplied the bikes from their abandoned bike inventory. A campus Environmental Grant, awarded by the Environmental Council in the fall of 2001, was used to purchase bike repair tools, locks and 15 new single-speed bikes. These blue bikes were wrapped in yellow tape to further identify them as part of the Yellow Bike Cooperative.
In the fall of 2002, students were formally invited to join the Yellow Bikes Cooperative for a nominal annual fee of $6. Parents of entering first year students received a letter explaining the program during the summer. Over 230 students joined the Yellow Bikes Cooperative in the fall, receiving a key that fit the universal locks attached to any yellow bike in the program. A second campus Environmental Grant was awarded to the Yellow Bikes program with the challenge that if Public Safety would support the cost of a student coordinator, the environmental grant funds could be used to purchase additional new bikes; otherwise, the money needed to be used to fund a coordinator who would develop a long-term business plan for the program. Public Safety, an advocate of the program, budgeted a student Yellow Bikes Coordinator position for FY '03-04, enabling the environmental grant funds to be used to purchase an additional 20 new single speed bikes (Raleigh Retroglide) for inclusion in the fleet in the fall of 2003. The program has also secured storage and maintenance space in a storage area in Milliken and plans to maintain the bikes themselves.
Anyone who is a member of the Yellow Bikes Cooperative may access a bike anywhere on campus and use it to take them to their next destination. This does mean that the bike one rides to class may not be on the bike rack at the end of class. However, with more bikes in the fleet, the odds are good that a bike will be available when one is needed. The biggest challenge now may be getting more people to ride from Twilight Hall, a "bottom of the hill location," back onto the main campus.