You likely won’t catch a bookworm on a broken bike in Sidney.

The seaside town has begun an unexampled initiative, employing the library to make it easier for cyclists to maintain and repair their bikes.

In a program Sidney calls the first of its kind in BC, four bicycle repair kits, each containing “a wide range” of tools, have been made available for loan at the Sidney branch of the Vancouver Island Regional Library.

The inspiration behind the idea is the CRD’s Climate Action To-Go Kit which it offers to residents to check for home heating loss.

“And so this is [a] kind of similar model to that,” Kira Gill-Maher, a climate action & policy planner with the Town of Sidney, and the project’s manager, tells Capital Daily.

“The library can give out these tools that people might not be able to afford or might not think to buy for themselves.”

‍

You can sign out a kit as readily as you can any of the books that sit next to them on the library shelf. Outside, cyclists also can fix their wheels at a new bike repair station installed as part of the project.

“People can access these tools for free, do it on their own time, what works for them,” Gill-Maher says. 

It's about getting people to use bikes as a transportation choice

Using funding from the BC Alliance for Healthy Living, the town is trying to push residents toward local active transportation. Read: get on your bike and ride.

Part of the initiative offers bike training courses, including one on Sunday (the course is currently full) at the Panorama Rec Centre in North Saanich.

So, will the novel idea of lending tools—for up to a week at a time—for free entice more people to cycle, the hoped-for result? 

“It's hard to predict, you know, what the impacts will necessarily be,” she says, “But we’re hopeful that it will have a big impact.”

Gill-Maher says sometimes people who don’t use their bikes for a prolonged period find an expensive repair job awaits before getting the bike back on the road. And that unknown financial burden becomes a barrier. 

“The goal is to help remove barriers to people who want to do this,” she says. 

She says the town selected the library because it’s a “really amazing” community hub.

“Their main model is lending things out to people for free, for the community benefit and so it’s a pretty natural alignment.” 

Minimal cost for the kits

The cost of the tools was about $1K.

“Each of the kits, like the tools, works out to about 220 bucks each for the items within them,” Gill-Maher says.

Next weekend, the town is putting on electric bike skills courses.

E-bikes can cost anywhere from $1K to $4K and can take some getting used to for those used to relying on their own pedal power.

“That's for folks who want to get more comfortable riding e-bikes, or you know, are considering [buying an] e-bike, and so they want to have a chance to try it out and make sure they're confident with the technology.”

Sidney also is participating in GoByBike Week, which will take place in June. 

‍