Williamstown’s only tall bike, built by students in 2014!
The Purple Bike Coalition (PBC) is Williams College’s free bike service organization, based out of the bike shop on the ground floor of Mark Hopkins dorm in Greylock Quad. Run and staffed by students, we offer FREE bike repair and rental services to students, faculty, and staff during the school year and summer.
Rental Program: We now have more than forty bikes sporting spiffy yellow seats for your use! Go to our Request a Rental page to fill out a rental request. If the rental form is closed we are not currently accepting rental requests. If you forget your lock combo, you may request your combo.
Bike Repair Open Hours: In addition to our rental program, we offer free bike repair to any students, faculty, and staff who stop by our shop during open hours. Repairs are available for both PBC rental bikes and personal bikes. Stop by with your bike during our weekly open hours for free collaborative repairs! Plan to be in the shop for a little while as we help you with the repair and teach you a little bit of basic bike maintenance along the way. A basic understanding of bicycle mechanics is a great tool for any rider so we do our best not only to help fix your bike but to show you how to fix your bike on your own.
Need to transport large objects around campus? Contact us about using our cargo bike, built winter 2015 by students
How Can This All Be Free? We would like to thank our sponsor, the Center for Environmental Studies, and Facilitators for Allocating Student Taxes (FAST) for their financial and organizational assistance. Also, this program could not exist without big help from Campus Safety Services.
Where Do All The Bikes Come From? While we get some bikes from directly from the donations of students and others who live in the Williamstown area, bikes are mostly donated by Campus Safety Services. These are unregistered bikes which have been confiscated from around campus. To avoid having your bike end up in our rental program, please register your bike!This can be done by bringing your bike to the Campus Safety office in the basement of Hopkins Hall, and takes less than 5 minutes.
The Purple Bike Coalition hires! Get paid to work on bikes! Our hiring process is subject to change, but most recently it has consisted of an application form sent out at the beginning of the academic year and a subsequent open hours interview. Alternatively, you can come to open hours to learn how to fix bikes as a volunteer. If you start showing up consistently and get some solid experience, we may hire you as a mechanic. Experience is a bonus, but only enthusiasm is required; we are happy to train you! If you are interested in joining the team, email [email protected].
Like us on Facebook or Instagram (@williams.pbc) to get the inside scoop on everything PBC!