Six new bike lockers near the UW-Stout’s Heritage Hall are available for off-campus students and faculty, giving them a place to secure their bikes and get them out of the weather.
The lockers were purchased with about $6,000 from the Chancellor’s Office and join 20 double lockers that hold 40 bikes for students at CKTO residence hall. For information on renting the lockers, go to the Stout Sustainability bike page.
“We’ve seen an uptick in people biking in the winter to campus,” said Sarah Rykal, UW-Stout sustainability director. “We wanted a place for people to be able to park their bikes when it rains and snows. This is a pilot project. Because we are a Bicycle Friendly University, we wanted to have more infrastructure for bikes.”
In 2016 the League of American Bicyclists named UW-Stout a Bike Friendly University for promoting and providing a more bikeable campus for students, staff and visitors. The university also offers bike fix-it stations equipped with the tools needed to get bikes back on the road.
The new lockers cost $50 a year. Also, a three-sided bike shelter near them was installed in 2015 to promote the use of alternative transportation on campus. The shelter holds about a dozen bikes.
This past summer, the StoutBikes program added 22 new bikes purchased through student Green Fees, including helmets, lights and locks. The bikes are available for rental at a cost of $50 per year, $30 per semester or $10 per weekend. Rentals are offered through Stout Adventures. All of the bikes were rented over the summer, and about half are rented now, Rykal said.
“A number of people have been renting them over the weekends,” Rykal said. “It was a brand new project, so we really didn’t know what to expect.”
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Student Meta Adams uses one of the new campus bike lockers, which are between Heritage Hall and the University Library.
