Ojai’s Free Bike Project Hits a Bump

It has been a bumpy road for the freewheeling Ojai Community Yellow Bike Program, two months after leaving 20 bicycles strategically placed around the small city to encourage residents to hop on and leave their cars at home.

One bicycle was found forlornly lying at the bottom of a barranca along a rural road, its spokes vandalized.

Another was spotted being ridden along Ventura’s beachfront promenade, 14 miles and a long bike path ride away from the Ojai Valley.

And at Ojai’s downtown bus park and ride lot, thieves didn’t bother stealing a bicycle--they made off with the entire bike rack that organizers had placed there to house the bright yellow single-gear, two-wheelers.

“There’s still 20 bikes,” said Bobbie Houston, a member of the Ojai Bicycle Coalition, which began the program in conjunction with half a dozen civic groups and inmates at the nearby Ventura County Honor Farm who rehabilitate the donated bikes. “How many of them are still on the road? Less than 10.”

In truth, no one is exactly sure just how many remain in use.

Five additional bicycles were put on the streets of Ojai last week, but finding one is more difficult than organizers originally envisioned.

The instantly recognizable bicycles are more like endangered species than the familiar sights the coalition had hoped they would become with residents casually climbing astride to flit around town on errands before leaving a borrowed bike in a conspicuous spot for someone else to use.

But organizers resist the notion that some bikes have fallen victim to theft.

“They’re just being used full time, they’re not stolen,” coalition founder Suza Francina insisted. “There are people in the community who really need a bike. I hope they know if they take them home to use the next day, that’s OK.”

Moreover, even in an oasis of alternative lifestyles and free thinkers such as Ojai, some people have not quite grasped the progressive idea of using free bikes as substitute urban transportation.

Kids regarded them as toys, rather than pollution-free, congestion-diminishing vehicles, provoking program volunteers to hold off making more bikes available until school started again.

Some people blithely pedaled miles from town, leaving a propped-up bicycle awaiting the next infrequent rural rider and prompting organizers to wonder how the initial cyclist returned to civilization.

Still others are, well, a little unclear on how the program is supposed to function.

“We’ll get a call from someone who will say ‘OK, I’ve ridden the bike home, now come and get it,’ ” Francina said. “We should have done more . . . to explain the program before we launched the bikes.”

The glitches and glacial consciousness-raising efforts have tempered early hopes of making a small dent in the average 20,000 vehicles that clog the main street of the arty enclave each day.

But attempts are being made to strengthen the program in Ojai, one of at least five American cities to provide free bikes for its residents’ use.

Another 10 bikes will soon be introduced, with more to come.

Education on yellow bike etiquette is being stepped up, including improved signs on the bicycles containing explicit how-to-use instructions, such as returning the bikes to a rack in a visible location.

More citizen volunteers are sought to maintain the bikes’ road worthiness.

“I would consider it a small success on the road to increased alternative transportation,” Francina said of the program so far. “In a sense, a free community bike program is a barometer for the community. It’s a barometer in the sense of how much the community understands alternative transportation. And in the Ojai community, alternative transportation is in its infancy.”