A New Policy on Abandoned Bicycles

 They lose their seats and wheels. They rust, corrode and rot. Sometimes parking cars back into, and bend, them. 

I have seen many of them locked to signposts, trees and railings that line sidewalks of this city. Less frequently, I have seen them tethered to public bike parking racks and the ones on campuses and workplaces.

I am talking about abandoned bikes.  Most such bikes aren’t high-end and don’t seem to have been particularly well-cared-for before they were forgotten. You can almost tell they were purchased for not much money or were “inherited” or “rescued.”

 Once in a while, though, I’ll see a relatively high-quality bike still in pretty good condition that’s been left by its lonesome for a few weeks. I imagine that its owner had to move on short notice or had some other kind of emergency.

Whatever the circumstances, the City’s Department of Transportation is trying to cut down on the number of bikes abandoned along the city’s thoroughfares.  To that end, it is establishing a time limit for parking in public bike racks.

According to the new policy, an abandoned bike is “a usable bike that is locked in a public bike rack for more than seven consecutive days.”  Anyone can report such a bike and request removal in order to free up more space.

Once a bike is reported, the DOT will tag it.  If the bike is not removed after seven days, it can be confiscated by the DOT, NYPD or a designated representative and turned over to the nearest NYPD precinct for 30 days. If the bike isn’t claimed, it will be sent to the Property Clerk, which has a convoluted process for requesting return of property.

I have to wonder, though, how effective this policy will be.  For one thing, as I’ve mentioned, abandoned bikes are more likely to be found on lamp and sign posts and railings than on public bike rack—at least in my observation. Also, as Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner points out in her Time Out article, one can “technically “ cut off the tag and keep the bike in place.

Searching For Abandoned Bicycles

From Coastal Point

Now that Fall is upon us, tourists and summer residents have left their seaside summer cottages, condos and hotel rooms.  So have the people, mostly young, who worked in those places, and summer camps, for the season.

Many of those workers are college students from other countries.

In Bethany Beach, Delaware, Assisting Bicycle Commuters (ABC)--a non-profit organization in Bethany Beach, Delaware that loans bicycles to people who need transportation to and from work—leant bikes to some of those seasonal expats.

Now ABC is trying to find some of those bikes. Each has a yellow stripe painted on the rear of the seat and a Bethany Beach Police Department sticker on the frame.

Anyone who spots such a bicycle should call Mariner’s Bethel United Methodist Church at (302) 539-9510 and it will be picked up.

I suspect that some of those bikes were left in basements of the places where those students lived and worked.

What's That Bike Doing On The Railroad Tracks?

 In previous posts, I've written about bicycles that ended up in the canals of Amsterdam, Paris and Brooklyn as well as rivers like the Tiber and even larger bodies of water like Jamaica Bay.

Probably the most common reason why bikes meet the same fate as mob victims in the Gowanus Canal (accordig to legend, anyway) is theft:  The perps don't know what else to do with the bike once they've used it for a getaway or joyride or realize that someone will recognize it, especially if it's from a municipal bike-share program.  Old bikes also get dumped when their owners realize what it cost to fix them, or they don't realize those bikes can't be fixed.  Or, people just want to get rid of them because they're disused and decaying.

Whatever the reasons, none can rationalize tossing a two-wheeler into the turbid or turbulent waters of a canal, creek, river, lake, bay or ocean.  Particularly indefensible is an incident that seems to be part of a pattern developing in Leeds and other parts of the UK.

According to a BBC report, vandalism, tresspass and other kinds of anti-social behavior have been on the rise in and around British railway facilities.  The Cross Gates station in Leeds seems to have been particularly hard-hit by such incidents, which include young people leaving or tossing bicycles in or alongside railroad tracks.

The incident shown in the surveillance video also reflects a particular ritual that seems to have developed around the practice:  One young person abandons  the bike on the platform edge before one of his peers drops it onto the tracks.

That sequence of events suggests, to me,  that it might be some sort of gang ritual:  The first young man might be leaving it for the other to toss in order to prove something or another.  Or, perhaps, the first young man simply didn't want responsibility if the bike-tossing caused injury or damage.

Whatever their motivation, no bike, no matter how inexpensive or ratty, deserves such a fate.

Where Did You Leave Your Bike?

When I go to work, I park my bike on the rack in the college's parking lot.  There, a Peugeot mixte from around 1985 has been parked for at least a couple of years.  I can so date the bike because it's the same model I gave my mother:  a basic carbon-steel frame painted burgundy with yellow and orange graphics, equipped with European components except for the Shimano derailleurs and shifters.

At least one security guard has asked me whether I know who owns that bike.  I don't:  It was just there one day, and has been there ever since.  In the meantime, the chain has turned nearly as orange as the graphics, and other parts are tarnishing or rusting.  The paint still looks pretty good, though, which means that the bike probably wasn't ridden much before it was parked on that rack.

Campus security personnel want to clip the lock and give the bike to a charity or someone in need.  But, as one officer said, "The day after we get rid of it, its owner will show up."

So the owner of that bike remains a mystery. Perhaps she (or he) rode in one day, had some sort of emergency and never returned.  Or perhaps s/he decided that one ride was enough and simply abandoned the bike.

We've all seen bikes like that chained to trees, signposts or other objects for what seem like geological ages.  Once, I went with my parents to the Post Exchange (PX) at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, when my father was a reservist.  I saw a nice Fuji--an S10S, I think--chained to a pole seemingly since that base opened.  A soldier noticed that I was eyeing the bike. He said "the guy", meaning the bike's owner, probably "shipped out."  In the military, they can tell you to go to the other end of the world literally on a moment's notice, he said.

How many "orphan" bikes are there?  What are the stories of the people who left them behind?

Those questions have been asked for years about a bicycle on Vashon Island, Washington, about 15 minutes from Seattle.  This bicycle, though, isn't locked to a tree:  It's in the tree.

Not surprisingly, a few legends have grown about, and claims have been made for, it.  In the latter category is the claim made by Don Puz, who grew up on the island.  When he was a child, his family's house burned down.  Donations to the family included a bicycle, which was too small for Don and had hard rubber tires.  He says that one day in 1954, he rode his bike into the woods where he met some friends.  They weren't riding bikes, so he walked home with them, leaving the bike in the woods.  He simply "forgot" about it, he says, until it showed up on Facebook.

Which brings us to the legends--one of them, anyway.  According to the Facebook posting, "A boy went to war in 1914 and left his bike chained to a tree.  He never came home."

That myth isn't hard to refute:  It's very unlikely that a  boy small enough to ride that bike would have gone to war. Also, if he was American, he probably wouldn't have gone to war in 1914, as the US didn't enter World War I until 1917. 

As for Don Puz's claim, it's plausible if one question can be answered:  How did the bike end up as part of that tree?  Hmm..Dear readers, are any of you dendrologists?   

Not In Hamilton's Backyard!

Nobody likes seeing broken-down cars or trucks rusting away in someone's front yard.  Part of the reason, of course, is that it's unsightly and can be a health hazard.  But I think it also has to do with the perception that anyone who keeps the rotting hulks of motor vehicles next to his or her house is low-class.  Some people, I'm sure, associate decaying station wagons and vans with trailers rather than solid middle-class homes.

I think most people would be even more surprised to see such waste next to a brownstone in a fashionable part of the city.  Certainly, almost nobody expects to see something like this:

in front of a landmarked brownstone in a designated historic district.  But I saw that pile of bikes and parts in front of such a house in Hamilton Heights, just two blocks away from the house once owned by the man for whom the district--and a popular Broadway musical--are named.

I would love to know the story of how all of those bikes and parts ended up there.  

What The Coast Guard Doesn't Like About Bike Share Programs

In an earlier post, I wrote about a legitimate complaint some people make about bike-share programs, the Uber-style programs in particular.  Because bikes in such systems can be located with a smart-phone app, users can leave bicycles wherever they are finished with riding them.

The problem is that in some instances, bikes are left literally wherever their riders stopped riding them.  This became a particular concern in Chinese cities, where streets and sidewalks are narrow and all manner of vehicles, from trucks to rickshaws, compete for space with cyclists and pedestrians.  Some streets and sidewalks became literally impassable, and police warned that the masses of abandoned bikes were keeping police, firefighters, medics and other responders from reaching emergency sites.

Here in the US, you can add the Coast Guard to the list of non-fans of bike share programs.

Why?, you ask.  Well, according to a recent report, bicycles--usually from share companies--are left on Washington State ferries.  When ferry crew members see a bicycle but can't find whoever was riding it, they have to send an emergency call to the Coast Guard which, in turn, has to start a rescue operation.  Since neither the Coast Guard nor the ferry operators can assume that the bike was simply abandoned, the operation is treated as a "person overboard" issue.

Cyclists disembark from Washington State ferry.

Such missions, as it turns out, are expensive.  In one incident last week, it cost $17,000 to send out helicopters and other equipment as well as Coast Guard members to ensure that no passenger ended up in the water.  Such missions take time and, as with any nautical rescue operation, must cover a large expanse of waterway, as currents can pull or push a struggling swimmer many kilometers in any direction.

(I know a bit about such things because my father was a Coast Guard reservist for more than two decades.)

Now Captain Linda Sturgis, the Coast Guard commander for Puget Sound, is urging people to leave share bikes on shore and board as passengers.  That sounds reasonable enough, but, as it turns out, many commuters get to and from work by riding share bikes to and from the boats.  So, upon disembarking from the ferry, a commuter would have to find another share bike to complete his or her trip.  I have never used such a system, but I imagine that there will be time when a bike can't be located in a timely fashion, as we used to say at the office.

Now I have to wonder whether ferries here in New York--in particular the Staten Island and Wall Street ferries--are experiencing similar problems.

Both... Or Neither?

Was this ever a functioning bicycle?

Or was it intended as a bike rack?

Could it be that whoever created it is laughing at people like me for spending time--and a blog post--on it?

If You Find It, Is It Still Abandoned?

Believe it or not, there was actually a time in my life when I wanted to be an archaeologist.  Of course, all I knew about the profession came from watching National Geographic shows; shortly thereafter, a similarly naive longing to be an oceanographer or marine biologist was fueled by seeing Jacques Cousteau's adventures on television.

As for the archaeology fantasy:  I had visions of finding people, animals and artifacts frozen in a particular moment when a storm or avalanche struck, smoke choked, a tide engulfed or an advancing glacier encased, them.

What if I were to find a bicycle abandoned or forgotten in a particular moment?  Would I find it in the remains of an ancient house, dump or street?  In an alley, perhaps?