Posted on 09/10/2001 5:12:17 PM PDT by IowaHawk
You can always count on human nature.
Which explains what happened to the 20 bicycles that Florida State University bought last fall for anyone to use as free transportation around campus:
All the bikes were stolen before the first semester was over.
"I was very disappointed," said Laura Miller, FSU's acting director of parking services. "The program was a washout, unfortunately.”
The bikes, all one-speed, unisex, bright yellow-painted cruisers, were purchased for $200 apiece. They were an effort to fight traffic congestion by encouraging students, faculty and staff to leave their cars parked when traveling across campus. The idea was that one would bike to a building and prop the bike outside, and then someone else would ride it to another building.
Miller said she saw a handful of FSU staff members riding the bikes early in the fall, though never any students. She said parking services officials searched campus for the missing bikes, scouring dormitory halls and bike racks without success. She said a couple of the bikes eventually were found off-campus "in tattered shape, with bent rims."
Miller, who was previously the assistant director of parking services, said the bikes were simply an experiment, which would have been expanded had it proved a success. Now, despite FSU's ongoing efforts to reduce traffic and parking problems, the bike program won't be tried again.
Miller said FSU officials weren't completely surprised the free bike program failed.
"I think there was a hope that the honor system would work," Miller said. "But we never lost sight of the realities of the modern world."
Especially after FSU's highly successful Free Camaro Program for the football team.
It went broke after a month. They'd been keeping it alive by priming the pump from the student general fund. And got caught.
just another dumbass liberal plan... like gun control...
you can almost hear the gears turning.... wouldn’t it be just
wonderful if...
imagine a world without guns.
then they spew some hairbrain utopian garbage towards
the rest of us. i find it equally irritating and amusing.
imagine a campus without bicycles, pinheads.
According to Lefty urban legend, the 'free yellow bike' thing has been a big success Amsterdam - though evidence suggests that the Dutch are equally enthusiastically about filching two wheelers.
Not that repeated failure makes any difference. Expect campus loonies to continue pushing this sort of idiocy, in the vain hope that they can demonstrate that somehow, collectivism will work.
A male might explain this by reference to this finding
Yep, that's what keeps driving them to try this!
The thing is that the Dutch have so many of these around that stealing them doesn't work out. Even if you repaint it, the design is so recognizable, no one will buy it. Plus, why should anyone buy one when there's a free one just around the corner.
The sheer size of this nation guarantees that such a plan will never work. Plus, all those scum that are walkin' around thanks to liberals in the first place.
Probably destroyed by "townies" who decided that it was their civic duty to kill them before they bred.
Only difference is the size of their budget. No government program has ever been terminated becaused of demonstrated failure. If this had been a welfare program, it would be renewed this year with 20,000 bicycles. And we'd all be hearing stories about "bicycle queens" with ten bicycles on ten different campuses, etc., ad nauseum.
I am shocked, shocked!
...and hitler’s gun control was an overwhelming success.
so many of the great ideas come from europe.
In Amsterdam, consternation over a bike thief's astonishing confessionsNovember 10, 1999
By William J. Kole, Associated Press
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — The newly published confessions of a former drug addict who claims he stole 50,000 bicycles while roaming the streets of Amsterdam has hit a raw nerve in the Dutch capital, where bikes far outnumber automobiles and just about everyone has lost one to a thief.
Now, two major bike rental companies are suing the publisher of "100,000 Bike Valves'' for a cut of the book's profits, saying they're certain the author, Chiel van Zelst, was responsible for some of the hundreds of bikes they've had stolen over the years.
And one of Amsterdam's top law enforcement officers is in hot water for accepting a signed copy of the book at a news conference, where he joked with Van Zelst — a man some say belongs behind bars — and made light of the city's chronic bike theft problem.
"This is all too crazy for words,'' said Jaap Molenaar, who runs Rent-a-Bike in the heart of Amsterdam. "Now, if you go to the police station because your bike was stolen, they'll laugh while they take your report. We're not laughing. `100,000 Bike Valves'? That's 50,000 bikes!''
Molenaar and Jos Louwman, who runs the MacBike rental agency, are suing Dutch publisher Nijgh & Van Ditmar to recover some of their losses. A judge has not yet ruled whether they have a case.
Bicycle theft is legendary in Amsterdam, peaking in the 1980s, when Van Zelst claimed to have been active. Police have since cracked down on the addicts who steal bikes for drug money and resell them within hours for as little as $13.
Police statistics released Wednesday show the number of reported bike thefts has declined to 7,515 this year, down about 4.5 percent from 7,878 in the same period in 1998. However, because most thefts are never reported, estimates of the number of bikes that disappear each year run as high as 180,000.
Officer Klaas Wilting, chief spokesman for the Amsterdam police, has been roundly criticized for accepting a signed first copy at a book launch on Monday.
In "100,000 Bike Valves'' — whose title refers to the valve stems used to pump bike tires full of air — Van Zelst gives an almost do-it-yourself account of how to steal a bike and get away with it, right down to the best way to conceal bolt-cutters under a jacket.
At the book launch, Wilting called the book a gripping read about what can happen to a young person who dabbles in drugs and becomes addicted.
He maintained in an interview that there was nothing wrong with his promotional statements. Authorities, he said, have never seriously considered arresting Van Zelst because there's no evidence to back his theft claims, and in any case, the statute of limitations has expired for the alleged crimes.
"He could work because there are plenty of very nice Amsterdammers who are perfectly happy to buy a hot bike'' for $13, Wilting said.
Van Zelst, who appeared bemused by all the attention his book has received, agrees that thieves are only half the equation.
"Everyone's making me out to be the monster of Amsterdam,'' he told the Rotterdam newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. "All I'm doing is holding up a mirror in front of the people of Amsterdam. If the bikes didn't sell, they wouldn't be stolen. People don't like to hear that.''
But, he added with a touch of remorse, "If your bike was one of my victims, then I'm sorry.''
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