Who doesn't know it? Your bike sits in the corner for weeks because the tire is flat or the gears are broken. The next appointment at the bicycle repair shop around the corner isn't available for another two months and you end up with a big bill. All these problems will be a thing of the past in the future - thanks to the new HFT bike repair shop.
Pop-up bike workshop
On May 19, the HFT bike workshop will celebrate its premiere. As part of Sustainability Week, a pop-up workshop will be set up in the courtyard between Building 1 and Building 3. Amando Reber works as an urban planner in the research and transfer project M4_LAB and runs a bicycle workshop in Nürtingen on a voluntary basis. In the pop-up workshop, he shows anyone who is interested how they can repair their bikes themselves. Tools, spare parts and know-how are available. All students and employees of the university are cordially invited to the self-workshop. With good music and drinks, the bikes will be roadworthy again in no time.
In the future on a cargo bike
But the pop-up workshop is not the only thing that will be happening: As part of HFT goes green, Elisabeth Wassermann, Emily Wermeier and Moritz Lambe from the Interior Design and Environmental Logistics degree programs are currently working on a concept for a cargo bike. This will make the bike workshop mobile and can be used in many places in the future.
Strengthening the bicycle as a means of transport
In 2019, a study was conducted on mobility behavior at HFT Stuttgart. According to this, students cover 9% of their journeys to and from HFT by bicycle. This is still 2% more than the average in the Stuttgart region. Compared to other universities, however, the proportion is significantly lower. At Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, for example, 44% of students come by bicycle. But what are the reasons for this big difference? According to the survey, there are two central causes: the poor network of bike paths in Stuttgart and the lack of infrastructure at the university (Heckmann, 2019). The new bike workshop is intended to help strengthen cycling as a mode of transportation at the university.
The bike workshop is a joint project of HFT Goes Green (Jonas Stave), the Competence Center Mobility & Transport (Tom Kwakmann) and the transfer project M4_LAB (Amando Reber, Elena Schön) and is financially supported by the Innovative University.
Source: Study on mobility behavior by Rebecca Heckmann, 2019: https://www.hft-stuttgart.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Forschung/Projekte/Umfragebericht.pdf
