Battle of the bicycles

The Social Bike Hamilton program, an initiative that McMaster recently invested $25,000 in, continues to be promoted by the university as another great addition to the growing cycling culture both within McMaster and in the greater City of Hamilton.

However a complementary, free, student-initiated service has not received the same kind of unanimous support that Social Bicycle Hamilton has enjoyed.

Hamilton non-profit cycling advocacy group Start the Cycle, which is based in McMaster Innovation Park’s entrepreneurial program The Forge, started the Mills Bike Library program last year. But the program’s start-up has had to face a series of complications and setbacks due to a series of Security service policies, miscommunications, and a perceived threat to the Social Bike program.

Start the Cycle’s conflict with McMaster’s Security Services began in late summer of 2014. Start the Cycle and their Bike Library initially planned for MACycle to donate some of the used bicycles that they receive from Security Services for their annual bike auction.

Then, Start the Cycle co-founders Charles Burke and Justin Hall received an email from Security Services, first from Sgt. Cathy O’Donell, who stated: “I believe this is in contravention of our memorandum of understanding with MACycle. Please follow up. Also a reminder that Terry [Sullivan] wants to be very confident that we have integrity in the process of bikes transferred to MACycle and that they make it to auction.”

Sgt. Ian James confirmed this understanding. “The MOU agreement between McMaster Security and MACycle states that all bikes turned to MACycle by Security must be auctioned, not donated for the bike share project.”

In an interview with The Silhouette, Sullivan explained that the memorandum of understanding between Security and MACycle acted similarly to how the Hamilton Police handle found property, in that they need to ensure that property is managed in a transparent and responsible fashion. He cites that one of the issues with distributing MACycle’s donated bicycles to the Bike Library is the potential liability issue for Security Services and the university in the case of a damaged bicycle.

But Sullivan assured that this could easily be solved if MACycle repairs the donated bikes and reforms the memorandum.

Start the Cycle, however, did not feel they got this kind of assurance.

Despite Start the Cycle’s requests to view and negotiate the memorandum, their email chain went silent. The current Director of MACycle was not present for the original agreement between Start the Cycle and MACycle, and is unaware why bicycles were prevented from being donated to the bike library.

In their August meeting with Sullivan and Energy Management and Sustainability Engineer Shahid Naeem, some of the issues were clarified, but not without further issues being raised.

“During our conversations I was scolded for the phrasing we used in the initial Silhouette article, where I felt it was the very neutral position that the Bike Library complimented Social Bicycles. They don’t compete in any way,” said Hall, who along with Burke is frustrated by the Social Bikes vs. Bike Library narrative that they believe Sullivan and Shahid are buying into.

In reality, Burke and Hall are both supporters of SoBi and the university’s decision to spend $25,000 for a cycling program. Burke stressed that they are a bike advocacy group that supports all forms of biking initiatives on campus.

“The reason why we started ours is because we know not every student will have access to a Social Bicycle. Some don’t have credit cards, other ones are international students that don’t even have access to credit cards and some are too young…We wanted to give a free option that would never, in any way, compete with Social Bicycle, but there are other people out there who think it will.”

Even a Hamilton Spectator article featuring City of Hamilton project manager of Transportation Demand Management Peter Topalovic, who directly helped implement Social Bicycles into McMaster, stated that he “would not foresee any competition between the two schemes” and thought that the concept of Bike Libraries was complementary to SoBi.

Sullivan’s current tone has been more supportive of this initiative than what has been reported by Start the Cycle.

“There may very well be an overlap between the programs,” he said. “However, any initiative that supports the use of bicycles as an alternative transportation method is good for our campus and community.”

“We didn’t ask for any money but he’s stating that he believes, and McMaster believes in promoting bikes and other kinds of transit, and we didn’t get that experience from him,” said Burke.

“We didn’t even ask for money, if you believe in this, make sure that when two students come to you, that you give them the same exact level of support.”

“We asked for four broken bikes that we could with MACycle and fix up ourselves.”

Sullivan is set to have a meeting with Burke and Hall this week.

Social Bike currently charges McMaster students, faculty, and staff $70 each for an annual membership, and is also looking to expand its service area as the year progresses. The Mills Bike Library provides student five bikes and helmets that can be borrowed on a 24- to 48-hour basis, just as if they were borrowing a book free of charge, with a potential to grow in size and usage if it is able to get more bicycles donated from MACycle.