By Malak Monir
It’s a common sight around Education City – yellow bikes abandoned, seemingly at random in the middle of the roads. Not all of them are intact and many are left with flat tires or broken pedals.
The QF Ride bike system has only been operational since October 20, but already it is being abused.
“On a daily basis we have issues with misuse of the bikes,” said Alexandru Rosca, the recreation supervisor of the QF Support Services directorate, which oversees the QF Ride bike system.
The QF Ride bike system had its soft opening last month, with 60 bikes available for use out of a planned 200. But the system is already having trouble with improperly parked or damaged bikes, as well as problems with the registration process.
According to Rosca, at least 20 bikes have been broken since the program started and several bikes have had to be retrieved from various places around campus because they were not parked in the stands designated for them.This can be problematic, Rosca explained, because the batteries that power the bikes’ electronic functions need to be recharged at the bike stands.
“I really don’t understand [how bikes are being broken], because those are solid bikes and I really don’t understand how this happens,” Rosca said, explaining that broken bikes are sent to a QF Facilities Management workshop to be repaired.
In the event that a bike is broken, he added, students should contact QF using the number provided on the bike itself for maintenance issues. Despite the number of bikes that have been damaged, Rosca said that they have only received three emails informing them of issues with the bikes.
“Students need to understand that if there is any misuse of the bikes or they are not properly parking the bikes, their access will be automatically closed in the system,” Rosca said, pointing out that five students have already had their access revoked.
In order to use the system, students have to register at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University Recreation Center. Once they have done so, they will receive a pin number that, along with their student ID, can be used to take out a bike from one of the stands located across EC. This system allows support services to track which student has which bike, and since the bikes come equipped with GPS trackers, they can also tell where the bikes are at any given time.
The problem appears to be concentrated around the Janoubi Residence Halls, where there are currently no bike stands. As a result, students have either been leaving their bikes outside or attempting to take them into their rooms for safekeeping. According to Rosca, in just one-day support services had to retrieve 15 bikes that were improperly parked around the male residence halls.
According to Ibrahim Al Haidos, senior MEP projects engineer at QF Capital Projects and the project manager for QF Ride, there are plans to add stands to that area (near Janoubi residence halls) in the next phase of the project, for which plans are in progress.
As it stands, the Janoubi Residence Halls fall outside the boundary set by the security system installed on the bikes. Al Haidos explained that if a bike crosses that boundary, an alarm goes off in the security room. The reason this location is not supported by the system at the moment is the construction still underway near the dorms, Al Haidos explained.
“We found some bikes in the dorms, inside the rooms. Not for the purpose of stealing. Because the student knows he is accountable for this bike, and he didn’t find a station, so he took it inside to save it, to keep it safe,” Al Haidos said.
As a result of students leaving their bikes unsupervised outside of the bike stands, which also works as their charging stations, problems have surfaced with bikes being taken by students who had taken them out.
“There are no stands at Al Majliss Al Janoubi, which means anyone can steal someone else’s bike,” said a student who wanted to remain anonymous . “I stole three or four bikes and had them stolen from me.”
In cases like this, Al Haidos said, the responsibility for the bike still falls on the student who took the bike out, since they were supposed to park them in the stands instead of leaving them outside.
Another issue that has cropped up since the system has become operational is the registration process, which requires students to have updated QF Smart IDs that are compatible with the card reader for the bike stations.
According to Rosca, emails were sent out to all the EC universities in August, before the system’s launch, to inform them of this requirement. Two universities, Texas A&M in Qatar (TAMU-Q) and Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) had not yet updated student IDs, however, so students from both of these universities have not been able to register for the bikes.
Instead, those students have in fact borrowed bikes from others, since the system allows each student to take out two bikes, according to Rosca, one for themselves and another for a guest.
“When I tried to register, I was told that my ID needs to be updated because it doesn’t have the necessary barcode on the back to access the bikes,” said Ghina El
Aker, a senior at NU-Q. “So ever since then I’ve been using my friends IDs because they can check out more than one bike at a time.”
Both NU-Q and Texas A&M have been working with QF to resolve the issue.
According to Gregory Bergida, the director of Student Affairs at NU-Q, interested students can now get updated IDs by emailing Student Affairs Coordinator Aaleeya Spence with a photo to be used on the new ID. Otherwise, the full rollout of the updated IDs is expected to occur in January.
Similarly, Mark Barker, assistant director of building operations and HSSE at TAMU-Q said that he has received the new IDs from QF but is still working on getting them programmed and activated.