OU Officials Look for Feedback on Car-Renting Program

The program, which Dean of Students Ryan Lombardi and Director of Parking Marty Paulins are currently researching, would allow for students or faculty members to reserve on-campus rental cars at hourly or daily rates. The cars, contracted from a rental company, would be available for reservation online. When the rental time comes, the renter simply picks up the car.

This type of program is available on many college campuses already, but would be a new step in OU history. While OU has a history of bike rentals, it has yet to implement a car rental program.

“The car sharing has been popular on urban campuses for many years, and has begun spreading to campuses like ours more recently,” said Lombardi. “I think this could be very useful for students who don’t have vehicles and need to go shopping, run home, go to appointments out of town, etc.”

While the program has yet to be implemented, Lombardi and Paulins are currently reaching out to students via the OU Dean Twitter account. “If students aren’t interested, we won’t do it!” said Lombardi. “[Paulins and I] both feel that it could move forward if students are interested.”

And students could be driving away in their rented wheels soon enough. “We just have to select a vendor and sign a contract,” said Lombardi.  “However, I want to get student feedback first to see if this is something that students would like to see at Ohio University.”

Lombardi also emphasized the safety of this program, saying, “There is really very little risk to the university.  We only provide a parking space and market the program to students.”

This, along with the seven orange bicycles scattered amongst campus, show a movement towards rentable transportation for OU students. The bicycles, provided by real estate agency Bobcat Rentals, have been placed throughout campus, and are available for rent. This makes many car-less students very happy.

“I don’t have a car, and sometimes I need to go to Walmart!” said Alex Dubnye. “I’m tired of bribing my friends for rides. I would definitely rent a car.”

Lombardi also believes in the program’s potential to ease the lives of transportation-challenged Bobcats. “I think it has the potential to be of great benefit to our students and faculty,” he said.