Apparently abandoned bicycles / bikes at railway stations (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[bobm]

Notice seen at Paddington between platforms and 8 and 9.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Hmmmmm. 

Doesn't that just encourage any random passing teenager, with more time on their hands than is healthy, to simply move among those bikes, removing every single tag? 

[trainer]

Doesn't that just encourage any random passing teenager, with more time on their hands than is healthy, to simply move among those bikes, removing every single tag? 

How ageist! What about us old(er) people with time on our hands? 

[grahame]

From the Dunmow Broadcast

If you park your bicycle at Cambridge railway station’s cycle point, remove the tag to show you’re using it

Train company Greater Anglia is asking cyclists to remove unwanted or unused bikes from the cycle point next to Cambridge station, to help free up space for others.

Abandoned and unused bikes will be removed to free up space, and donated to Colchester charity Re-Cycle, which restores the bikes and donates them to communities in Africa.

Work has now started to attach tags to cycles. Cyclists should remove the tag from their bike before September 19 to indicate it is being used.

Any cycles with tags left on them will be removed and donated to charity.

A story from East Anglia - but haven't I seen comment on abandoned cycles at other stations - Paddington, Oxford and Bristol Temple Meads come to mind.

[CyclingSid]

Is this a variation of parking your car in the supermarket car park and not being able to remember where you left it? The Dutch must have excellent spatial memories to remember where their bike is in those massive station cycle parks.

[didcotdean]

This is done every so often at Oxford Station - link here to an Oxford Mail report from 2011 which details the same method being used then, ie all the bikes being tagged and those where they are left unclaimed after some weeks being removed.

This year though in university towns may have seen their owners leave in haste back in March thinking they would be back before now.

[Phantom]

Was a regular occurance at BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI)) before the covid lockdown kicked in

[Bmblbzzz]

It happens every so often at the sheffield stands throughout Bristol, though follow-up after the tags have been placed seems laggardly (I think the tags state one week or a fortnight, but they're usually still there a couple of months later). Which reminds me, I haven't seen a DVLA^▸ (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) clamping session post-Covid.

[Phil]

Drug dealers and "county lines" runners abandon bikes intentionally in hidden places, under bridges or in amongst hedgerows or shrubbery, and pass the location on to their mates so that they can hop on them and speedily get from A to B. The Police are fully aware of this and keep an eye on them rather than collect them up. I don't suppose they (the Police) are sufficiently funded to tag the bikes, electronically or otherwise.

[Red Squirrel]

Just out of interest, and slightly off-topic, I wonder if the new cycle parking provision at Temple Meads will be anything like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3-tUMgwCt8

[johnneyw]

That would blow the entire Temple Meads refurb budget many times over.  I loved the wording on the ticket validation machine... "inchecken", almost sounded like spoof Dutch.

[Bmblbzzz]

Drug dealers and "county lines" runners abandon bikes intentionally in hidden places, under bridges or in amongst hedgerows or shrubbery, and pass the location on to their mates so that they can hop on them and speedily get from A to B. The Police are fully aware of this and keep an eye on them rather than collect them up. I don't suppose they (the Police) are sufficiently funded to tag the bikes, electronically or otherwise.

That's a totally different sort of tagging! Not to mention different locations!

[CyclingSid]

Network Rail are having a clear out of "abandoned" bikes
https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-urged-reclaim-bikes-ahead-annual-cull-289715

Notices have been placed on all bikes at the front of the station and in the Friary bike park, advising owners that any bikes found with the tags still attached on 11 February will be cut free from the racks and placed into storage.