New path for bike sharing concept.

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BIKE SHARING ON CAMPUS IS HARDLY A NEW concept, but the University of Denver and the dry are proving you can put a new tire on an old ride. DU spokesman Chase Squires says they believe "this is the first time a private university and a city have partnered like this for a bike program."

The student senate's sustainability budget contributed $30,000, and then-seniors Mary Jean O'Malley and Zoee Turrill raised another $20,000 for the campus pilot. The city program, patterned on a program in Paris, begins next spring and will be run by a nonprofit, which a million-dollar donation from the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee got started, Squires explains. The DU bike library now has 40 bikes and two kiosks. Ultimately, the city will have 40 kiosks and 600-plus bikes. With 100 miles of paved, off-road trails that cross the city and connect to hundreds more miles of dirt trails, bikers will have tots of excursion options.

O'Malley and Turrill developed an informational packet outlining donor incentives, such as bike and kiosk advertising, says O'Malley, adding that "we met our goal easily" and the packet didn't seem to be needed. As the fundraising effort officially opened in front of the campus Sustainability Council, on which O'Malley and Turrill served, there were immediate signs of momentum--with the dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics donating $5,000 from that department's budget. And it was all downhill from there.