Bike Overboard!!

As I was crossing the Bank Street bridge over Ottawa’s Rideau River early this morning in minus 6 degrees C weather, I glanced down at the frigid water. And what did I spy? A frozen bike? :)
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Abandoned bikes: where do they go?Show more

(Excerpt from an article by Kathryn Hunt)

The police hold an auction a couple of times a year, where they auction off any bikes that aren’t claimed. But how long does a bike have to sit in a public place before someone comes by to remove it? And who does that? Where does the money from the auction go and who comes to the auction? How do you know where to go if your bike’s been left out and taken away?

Well apparently the majority of the bikes processed by the police are found; generally stolen and then recovered when they’re abandoned and someone reports finding them. When a bike is left locked in a public place, it’s up to the owner of the property to report it: they have to call the city to get someone to come out and cut the locks. Say the bike is left locked to the rail on the steps of a church: someone from the church has to call it in. If it’s left locked to a city bike rack, presumably someone from the city is charged with monitoring how long it stays there and when it comes down.

Anyway, the city collects them, then the bikes are picked up by the police and entered into the Canadian Police Information Centre. If the bike has a serial number, it will be entered into the database. And if you happen to know your bike’s serial number, you can search for it and find out if it’s been turned in anywhere. . . although I’m willing to bet most if not all of the cyclists I know don’t have a clue what their bike’s number might be. Maybe if you paid $1000 or so for your bike you’d know that, but generally bikes are like cats: few people go out and get purebreds. More often they’re adopted, secondhand, bought from friends, acquired, inherited from moves.

The police enter the bike into CPIC, and then hold onto it for a minimum of 30 days. If no one has claimed the bike in that time (and 80% of bikes go unclaimed) then the bikes are collected by an organization called Crown Assets Distribution, which is “a federal government organization responsible for the sale, distribution, disposal and re-use of surplus federal goods.” Their website posts items for auction, and sells everything from clothing to cars on a blind bidding system.

So the bikes don’t get donated to any non-profit organizations, but presumably they do find a new lease on life, and new owners, sooner or later. . . how much sooner or later depends on where they get left, and who decides to declare them abandoned, and whether they know to call it in. Something tells me most bikes sit on their own a good long while before someone gets irritated with them being there.

https://spacing.ca/ottawa/2010/01/12/abandoned/