MSU Bikes celebrates 20 years on campus

At Michigan State University, the bicycle is an integral part of the collegiate experience. For many Spartans, it’s essential transportation between classes. But it’s also a way to get exercise, pass the time with friends and experience the beauty of our sprawling, 5,200-acre campus.

That helps explain why the MSU Bikes Service Center, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, feels more like an institution than a store. Nestled near the river by Bessey Hall, the university-run center is the kind of place where a flat tire can turn into a lesson and abandoned bikes get a second life. MSU Bikes traces its roots to the volunteer-run MSU Bike Project, which launched in 2003; it officially opened as MSU Bikes Service Center in 2006.

In some ways, the center’s story is also the latest chapter of biking at MSU. The university’s cycling culture goes back much further than you might realize: In 1894, when MSU was still called Michigan Agricultural College, students and professors started a cycling club and commissioned a gravel bike path along Michigan Avenue. In the decades since, the university has continued to add more paths and infrastructure to promote a more bicycle-friendly campus. Today, the campus includes close to 20 miles of bike lanes.

Still, giving people a place to ride can only get you so far. What turned biking from a campus pastime to part of campus culture was the creation of a place that facilitated that ambition.

That is where Tim Potter comes in.

Potter, MSU Bikes’ sustainable transportation manager, has spent more than two decades shaping the Spartan biking tradition. A lifelong cyclist and mechanic, he volunteered with the early MSU Bike Project after reading about it in an MSU staff newsletter. The project began by fixing broken bikes and loaning them to faculty and staff to encourage the sport. The service grew quickly and, with support from campus advocates including Diana Twede and then-Vice President Fred Poston, it became a full-fledged university resource with Potter as its full-time manager.

“The whole objective was just to get more people on campus riding their bikes,” Potter said.

Since then, the store has done the quiet yet critical work to keep Spartans rolling. MSU Bikes sells and rents bicycles, performs repairs, and serves students, employees, locals and visitors. Its quality used bikes are refurbished and tuned by trained mechanics, keeping serviceable discards out of the landfill while giving customers a reliable and affordable alternative to new.

That practical mission connects to a bigger purpose: sustainability. The Office of Sustainability says safe bicycling is part of MSU’s stewardship goals because it helps reduce the university’s carbon footprint while supporting Spartan health and well-being.

In other words, the bike center is not just tightening chains and patching tubes — it is supporting a way of moving through campus that is good for people and the environment.

Potter’s work extends well beyond the service counter. He has served on transportation and bike advisory efforts at MSU and has been one of the people pushing to make cycling part of larger campus mobility planning. In 2019, MSU highlighted those efforts as part of a broader push to holistically improve transportation. In 2024, that work earned another milestone when the League of American Bicyclists renewed MSU’s Gold Bike Friendly University status, placing Michigan State among a small group of gold-rated campuses nationwide.

The innovations behind that progress might not be flashy when compared to MSU’s cutting-edge research, but they have proven to be empowering. MSU has added bike lanes, partnered on regional trail connections and expanded practical resources for riders, including repair support, bike registration and covered storage. Today’s bikers have access to do-it-yourself fix-it stations, secure storage areas and expanded infrastructure.

Potter said that the community impact shouldn’t be measured by air pressure alone. “We give a lot of free advice. We don’t necessarily charge for everything that we do for people.”

MSU Bikes also contributes to campus recycling efforts. Students leave behind hundreds of bicycles each year, many because of minor mechanical problems. Some are refurbished by the shop, some are sold through the MSU Surplus and Recycling Center and some become raw material for creative reuse, including an eye-catching kinetic sculpture at the store that was created by engineering students.

Twenty years in, the bike center’s impact goes beyond selling customers self-powered transportation. In fact, it is a cultural hub connecting all the spokes of a biking legacy over 100 years in the making, from a turn-of-the-century cycling club to today’s gold-rated campus. That kind of impact is measured not just in miles, but in the well-being, pride and joy that countless Spartans have experienced.