news story / By Meghannraye Sutton

Bike Lock

Arcata’s cheap bicycle library seeks to rise from the ashes

(June 12, 2008)  What remains of the former Arcata Library Bikes is not shiny and new. A pile of rusty cogs, broken spokes and flattened rubber wheels attached to partially disassembled metal bikes sits in front of a painted yellow garden shed off of Alliance Road. Inside the shed, one working mountain bike stands upright and is available to rent for $50.

Used to be, anyone could go and pick out a bicycle at the old Arcata Library Bikes warehouse on Eighth Street for $20. Go by there now, and you’ll see Humboldt Medical Supply and the new Rita’s Restaurant. But no longer is there a professional, operating bike library. Because last winter, Arcata Library Bikes, a nonprofit, closed after 10 years of operation. Former owner and bike genius Bill Burton said he just could not afford the high cost of rent at that building anymore, and openly blamed the City of Arcata for not funding his non-profit properly and consistently.

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“We needed money from the city,” he said. “We can’t operate on bake sales.”

It has now been over six months since Arcata Library Bikes closed. Burton has since relocated his biking efforts and is competing for control of a citywide bike library in Portland, Ore. Back in Arcata, one of his old volunteers operates a second generation “Arcata Library Bikes” without him out of a garden shed on Alliance Road. Meanwhile, the city of Arcata is talking about funding a whole new bike library in December, but doesn’t have any ideas on which individuals or group might be able to operate it.

Appropriate locations are being discussed by the transportation committee, but a place right down the street from the old bike library is strongly being considered. The Intermodal Transit Center (a.k.a., the bus station by the Endeavor) could house a bustling epicenter for bicyclists in the community.

When reached at his office last week, Chris Rall, local bike enthusiast and executive director of Green Wheels, said a new bike library is a great idea. “I encourage that,” he said. “Whether it be a bike library or simply a bike epicenter in Arcata, it’s needed. There needs to be something.”

Doby Class, Public Works director of Arcata, said that it is “one of (Arcata’s) major goals this year” to re-establish a working, self-sustained bike library within the city.

“The goal is not dead,” he said. “It’s basically just in hibernation.”

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