By Zach Pearce, PTMP:
Summer bicycle confiscations at our University, and many others, serve as an annual project with the intention of removing all abandoned bicycles from students previously living on campus. Like many annual tasks and projects, I found this summer’s bicycle collection to be a terrific opportunity to update processes which involved internal and cross departmental collaboration.
This involved:
1) Examining a current policy and making updates to enhance the process
- Identify and label all bicycle racks and changes to infrastructure, plot on a map
- Detail a tagging, removal, and storage process with a noted timeline, and identify staffing and equipment requirements
2) Create mechanisms for notification to the student and faculty/staff bodies, and University departments
- Physical tag serving as a notice with a removal date, with a timeline in the range of 1-2 weeks
- E-communications (University announcements, social media, mass emailing)
- Share with Police, Student Affairs, Housing & Residence Life, Recreation, Athletics, etc. for awareness and promotion
3) Implementation
- List communication method(s) for students so bicycles are not erroneously collected; this can include a departmental main email address and/or phone number or a direct contact
- Store the bicycles in a secured location accessible by the department and in an organized manner
- Record all bicycles removed and placed in storage (make/model/color/serial number)
- Store bicycles for determined length of time then remove (University approved auctions, donations, etc.)
- Bicycle collections help keep our campuses cycling infrastructure organized and accessible for future use, promoting non-vehicle commuting which we hope to see grow
Zach Pearce, PTMP, is an Associate Director of Operations for Old Dominion University. Zach can be reached at zpearce@odu.edu.
Forum Question: What communication methods are most effective for notifying students and staff about upcoming bike collections?