Bike racks outside Regents Garage. Ten bike rental kiosks are going to be installed around the campus.

Students and city residents interested in borrowing bikes for leisure and travel might be able to take advantage of a joint local and university bike share program as early as this fall.

College Park and this university sent out a request for proposal on April 10 to several bike share companies to see which might be interested in coming to the area, said Anna McLaughlin, this university’s Department of Transportation Services spokeswoman.

Since last spring, the city and the university have been working on various legal and procurement approvals as well as the requests for partnership with bike share companies, such as Capital Bikeshare and Social Bicycles, McLaughlin said.

“It’s a slower process than we would like,” McLaughlin said, noting they haven’t received any responses yet.

The push for a bike share program comes after the original plans for a program halted indefinitely in March 2014 after Public Bike Systems Company, a Montreal-based bike supplier that makes bikes and stations, announced its bankruptcy in January 2014.

The bankruptcy directly impacted Capital Bikeshare — the company tasked with the initial bike share program — so officials decided at that time to seek out other options.

City and university officials said they are hoping to attract a bike share system that offers safe bikes with baskets to allow users to travel with their belongings and also provides a mobile application that lets users track where there are available bikes, McLaughlin said.

For Capital Bikeshare, users normally pay an annual $75 fee and receive a key that lets them unlock and return bikes from any Capital Bikeshare station. Social Bicycles has varying membership costs depending on geographical location and lets users select bicycles from any location in the area with the bike’s built-in locks.

Both companies would provide an app that lets users find the nearest available bikes. Social Bicycle’s app, for example, allows users to reserve the bike they want and unlock it with their personal four-digit code.

Sophomore Frank Pogoda, who bikes to and from all of his classes, said bringing a bike share program to College Park is a great idea because it lets students have access to a bike if they need it.

“To give students the opportunity to have a bike when they need it and then drop it off where it won’t be rotting away and someone else can use it is a really good system that we could implement,” the computer engineering major said.

The number of bikes the program would include is unknown, but McLaughlin said there would be fewer bikes if the program requires the city and university to build custom stations.

College Park District 1 City Councilman Patrick Wojahn said he would like a program that is similar to Capital Bikeshare’s system of having custom stations, although he said he would support a program without stations, such as Social Bicycles, if it is user-friendly and accessible.

“People use bike share for what we call the last mile,” Wojahn said. “A great example of this is the distance between the College Park Metro Station and the university. Bike share would be a great way to traverse that distance without having to wait for a bus.”

Although Pogoda said he is worried implementing a bike program that requires its own custom stations could displace racks for bike riders who aren’t participating in the program, he said the positives of implementing a bike share program outweigh the negatives.

“It’s not a huge issue, however, if you look at the big picture,” he said. “I think it’s a fantastic idea.”