These shots are of dumpsters behind an apartment building on Lees Avenue near the Transitway. The building is being gutted/renovated/reclad. This project must include new bike racks, since the old ones are going out with the dumpsters. Along with the bikes still attached to the racks.
I have to say, I have never understood the abandonment of locked bikes. Some of them look like they should be abandoned but why lock them up? And it’s not cost effective to rescue them and recycle, I suppose.
Every now and then, the University of Ottawa flyers bikes that have been locked and untouched for months. Within a day or two, they’ll receive frantic calls from the owner of the bike that they know it’s there.
They use their bike rarely, but have no place to store it inside their apartment, so they lock it up outside.
I too find the number of abandonned bikes puzzling. My bikes have lasted me for decades (when not stolen); indeed my current 6speed (now one speed) makes all sorts of awful noises now. I went looking at new bikes and suffered permenant damage from the sticker shock.
So why are there so many abandonned bikes or bikes locked to posts? I suspect its the same reason as why I keep mine forever: there are people with a frugal, saving mentality that make the best/longest use out of objects. And there are those who are too stoned/drunk to remember where they left their bike, or even had one. Or maybe the stole the bike in the first place. There is a student filled house up the street from me, and I notice the youthful residents often no longer move their furniture with them, they just abandon it. The garbage is full of brown boxes from IKEA bookcases and dressers in Sept; the next year the contents of said boxes are at the curb. Cheaper to toss than move it. So maybe people just abandon their bikes as disposable. Or maybe they are like my umbrellas — damn if I can find them in my front entry next time it rains — are they all parked a bank machines or the library checkout kiosk? (Only the holey ones remain in my front entry). If I can forget umbrellas, maybe for others bike are equally forgettable.
A trip around suburbia on garbage night often sees one or more bikes or expensive toys out at the curb. I picked up a really nice NORCO bike with paniers, gloves, bell, etc but then discovered its a small frame size. Damn!
It still offends me to see usable bikes abandonned.