Original article published in The Daily Tarheel City Section, 8/25/06
By: Eric Shepherd Martin, Assistant City Editor
The wheels on Chapel Hill and Carrboro's new community bike program will be one step closer to turning Sunday when local organizations hold the Blue Bike Festival.
The Blue Bike program will give residents access to community bicycles to check out for a day and drop off at a number of hubs throughout town.
The bikes are expected to be available to the public in mid-September.
The program is sponsored by Students United for a Responsible Global Environment, The Legacy Center, an adult learning center, and The Recyclery, an organization that helps salvage and repair bikes.
Alison Carpenter, field coordinator for SURGE, said that several bike hubs were being discussed, including sites in park-and-ride lots and on campus. Plans for hubs at Carrboro's Open-Eye Cafe and Chapel Hill's 3 Cups were the closest to cemented, Carpenter said.
3 Cups general manager Badi Bradley said that the shop would like to work with Blue Bike, but that some final decisions had to be made with the property's landowners first.
To ride the bikes users will either pay a $10 annual membership fee or volunteer for two hours to keep the bicycles working.
The festival will be held to foster community awareness, and it will include a fundraiser from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the WCOM community radio building at 201 N. Greensboro St. in Carrboro.
The festival will be at WCOM and at Weaver Street Realty in downtown Carrboro.
"We hope to have 20 bikes out by the end of September," Carpenter said.
"Basically we'll be disassembling bikes, and painting them Carolina blue and putting them back together," Carpenter said about the festival activities.
Marlin Eshleman, a member of the Legacy Center, said donations would be accepted during the festival, and a raffle would be held for a bike from Carrboro bike shop The Clean Machine.
"The biggest priority is going to be (buying) the bike racks themselves," Eshleman said.
Any additional funds will go to SURGE and The Recyclery for maintenance.
