In August, Purdue University started a "Gold Bike" program in which 24 bicycles were put out on campus for common use. The bicycles, painted bright gold and carrying orange license plates, were supposed to ease traffic congestion and reduce bicycle thefts. The project seems dubious on both counts: Getting 24 people out of cars and onto bikes would have a neglible effect on traffic at a school as large as Purdue and it seems that putting a bunch of unlocked bikes out on campus would increase, rather than decrease, theft.

In any event, the outcome was predictable. Less than two months later, 20 of the 25 bikes cannot be found or are not in working order. (Details here; the news stories are conflicting about whether there were 24 or 25 bicycles.) This attrition rate is nearly identical to that experienced when my campus started the Berry Bike program in 1998; former student Dan Alban and I documented the program's failure in The Freeman.