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The reason the bikes went missing is the GPS system installed on the bikes was faulty, she said. The bikes weren’t supposed to be taken off campus, but with no working GPS there was no way to locate bikes that went missing.

“They could take them wherever — they just never came back,” Hamilton said.

A few were recovered, but they were in such rough shape they could not be returned to circulation. Rather than replace the missing bikes, the UWSA decided to go ahead with its plan to add another 40 in the second year with state-of-the-art GPS — bringing the total number of bikes to 47 — at a cost of $65,088.

Photo by Dan Janisse / Windsor Star

The project ended up costing $156,166 over two years, and results were much better in the second year, said Hamilton. But she said the UWSA is not interested in continuing with the current model, in which the U.S. firm Zagster supplied the bikes.

She said a big drawback of the pilot project was limiting the bikes to the campus. Students couldn’t even take a bike to the grocery store.

“I think bike sharing is an amazing service to students, it’s something we would like to look at further, but in partnership with the City of Windsor.”

Lori Newton, executive director of Bike Windsor Essex, said while the U of W pilot project was an “abysmal failure,” it’s not the same as citywide bike shares that have been great successes elsewhere.

“It’s very, very different,” said Newton, who said there was a lack of boots-on-the-ground management of the university project and the limited dock locations made it impractical for students to use.