Michigan State University in East Lansing will be using a bike registration system from Bike Index in Chicago, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, to manage bicycles on campus.
Bicycles are a popular mode of transportation for university students. Now university transportation staff must manage analog bicycles, but also e-bikes and scooters.
According to Bike Index, the volume and variety of vehicles on campus have forced administrators to invest in tools to manage their communication with vehicle owners regarding parking violations, abandonment, excessive speed, accidents, theft, and impoundment.
The Bike Index system allows departments on campus to communicate directly with bike users. The system has location-based messaging technology that uses smart QR code stickers to identify and track bicycles registered in the system.
The program also was designed to act as a deterrent against bike theft on campus while providing effective bicycle campus management for the university. Four-year students with bicycles have a 53 percent chance of losing their bike to theft, according to Bike Index. Bike registration in Bike Index’s registry should increase the chances of recovering and returning a stolen bike.
Bike Index’s international bike registration database contains more than one million registered bicycles. When a bike is marked as stolen, the Bike Index community and more than 1,500 partner organizations are notified.
By registering campus bikes into Bike Index’s data base, Michigan State University authorities should be able to increase the likelihood of their recovery in the case of theft—even if a bike is moved across state lines.
Bike Index’s University Management Dashboard system is used by 84 university partners and manages more than 30,000 bicycles.
“We are extremely excited to add MSU to our growing list of university partners,” says Craig Dalton, executive director of Bike Index. “Bike Index is best known for our tireless work in stolen bike recovery, but over the past six years, we’ve been building an operating system for bicycle management on university campuses. Our comprehensive system for universities allows administrators to manage all aspects of bicycles, e-bikes, and scooters on campus via a single, purpose-built system.”
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