Spin bikes were promoted toward the end of the Spring 2018 semester at California Baptist University; however, now that school has started again, the orange bikes have disappeared from every bike rack on campus except the one at the International Center.
“Spin has focused all of its efforts on bringing electric scooters to campuses,” said Ariella Steinhorn, a consultant for Spin. “Most of the bikes from the system are being donated to the university.”
That is the case with the bikes on CBU’s campus. However, with Spin moving to using electric scooters and CBU’s rules against the use of motorized scooters, both parties were forced to go their separate ways.
Shellyn Beltran, assistant director for the International Student Services, said the bikes have filled a need for international students, specifically.
“Since many of our students live off-campus and do not have transportation, the donation of the Spin bikes has allowed us to fill a need,” Beltran said. “International students are now able to rent a Spin bike for a semester through the International Center, allowing us to provide a resource to students to make their commute to campus a little easier.”
Two International students — Halilu Zhang, first-year graduate student studying violin, and Yushu Yang, senior computer science major — said they had no idea the bikes were donated to the International Center from the Spin company, but were grateful for the ability to utilize them whenever needed.
“We use the bikes almost everyday,” Zhang said.
ASCBU president Rebecca Arneson, senior double major in philosophy and business administration, commented about the previous student council’s work to bring the bike-sharing company on campus.
“They worked all year trying to find a bike-share program, and originally started looking into a different program that would actually charge them for being on-campus. Then, we found Spin Bike which was free to us,” Arneson said. “The reason it took so long was because of contracts, and while we hoped to have the Spin bikes again this year, we are close to getting a new company that does campus bike-share programs on campus.”
While Spin bikes are a thing of the past, soon CBU will begin a new bike-sharing company for all students to use, VeoRide. This bike sharing program will offer 15 minute rides for 50 cents each and will use the same process of rental through an app as Spin. Students should be on the lookout for more information coming soon regarding the new program provided by ASCBU.
