This article is featured in the 2024 Freshman special issue.
On July 31, students shuffled into the basement of Fahey-McLane Hall — the home base for Dartmouth Bikes — to secure a new set of wheels. The basement’s walls were lined with 20 refurbished bicycles priced $75 to $300, forming a makeshift bike shop. While summer may be prime time to purchase a new ride, the organization typically holds such sales once a term — including at the start of the fall term for new students.
Dartmouth Bikes, which was founded in 2011 through the Sustainability Office, rents and sells abandoned bikes that are collected and repaired by bike shop student mechanics at the end of each term, according to shop mechanic Asa Dow ’26. When a bike on campus appears abandoned, mechanics will attach a tag urging potential owners to remove the label and move their bike to a different location, Dow explained. If a bike remains unclaimed after two weeks, it is collected and brought to the shop for refurbishment. Students whose bikes were mistakenly collected can come to the shop at any time to look for and reclaim their property, Dow added.
According to Dow and shop mechanic Divik Verma ’26, the collection and refurbishment process is a part of the program’s sustainability mission. Bikes that students can “save” are repaired and sold or rented out, while those that cannot be repaired are broken down into parts to be used for future repairs, Verna said.
“That’s kind of the big ethos of the Dartmouth Bike Shop … to try and repurpose, recycle and do as much of that as we can and try to minimize buying new parts,” he explained.
According to Dow, students collect roughly 20 to 30 abandoned bikes each term.
In an effort to reduce the number of abandoned bikes on campus, Dartmouth Bikes also provides maintenance and equipment services to students. Dow urged students to reach out through the Dartmouth Bikes website to learn more about the organization’s rental and repair options to curb equipment waste. They also said students who no longer use their bikes can either schedule a drop-off via email or leave their bike outside of the shop, rather than abandoning it on campus.
In addition, student mechanics are available by appointment for repair requests or assistance assembling a new bike, according to the Dartmouth Bikes website. Once a week during the fall, spring and summer terms, Dartmouth Bikes also hosts two-hour Pop-Up Bike Shops to provide quick fixes, free air for tires and lubricant for chains. Dow added that the organization hopes these resources will improve bike longevity on campus.
As part of its mission to decrease the number of abandoned bikes on campus, the shop also introduced Open Shop Hours in the spring of 2023, according to the Dartmouth Bikes website. During open hours, cyclists are able to use the shop’s tools and resources to learn how to fix their own bikes, he explained.
“We want to just make that as accessible to everyone as we can and a big part is also just empowering people to learn the skills to do it themselves,” Verma said.
In the winter, when bike use and repairs on campus are at a low, Dartmouth Bikes offers a one-hour per week mechanics course. At the start of the course, each student is given a bike to work on, which they use in repair lessons, covering a different topic each week. The course begins with smaller fixes and builds up to more complex processes, leaving students with a “fully-functional bike that they know how to take care of” by the end of the term, Dow said.
“That’s the way we’re trying to get people to be more knowledgeable about their bikes, so that they’re not letting them go to waste or getting abandoned,” he explained.
Taking the winter repair course is often how bike shop mechanics become involved year-round. Dow and Verma, who were both enrolled in the winter of 2023, said they were introduced to Dartmouth Bikes through the course and continued to develop their skills after.
Dartmouth Bikes is constantly introducing new campus sustainability programs. Last spring, the group launched Project 529, a registration system for students to keep track of their bikes and reduce theft. Registered bikes have access to racks and dorm storage rooms, while the centralized information allows Dartmouth Bikes to reach out to bike owners before collecting.
“It’s our hope that we can make sure everyone can keep their bike [and] everything can stay registered to their owners,” Dow said. “[Project 529 has] been a big initiative, a big push for the Dartmouth Bike Shop to kind of shift towards that registration system.”
Bikes play a large role on campus, especially in the summer, when many students live off campus with a longer commute to class. Maddie Dubrinsky ’26 said she rented her bike from Dartmouth Bikes at the beginning of the summer and uses it to go to class and meet with friends.
“Getting a bike was the best decision I have made,” Dubrinsky said. “It has allowed me to move around campus much more efficiently, giving me more time to eat with friends and participate in activities between commitments.”
