Removing abandoned cycles

[kwackers]

Maybe bikes could be treated as 'abandoned' if both tyres are flat. Maybe not, if I had a puncture I might leave my bike at the station, walk home, collect it later

IMO once grass starts to grow between the tyre and the pavement then its defo outstayed its welcome.

[Cyril Haearn]

What is the legal situation, who do 'abandoned' bikes belong to? What if they are disposed of and the rightful owners want them back?

Left my car unused for a month or more quite often, no-one complains

[kwackers]

What is the legal situation, who do 'abandoned' bikes belong to? What if they are disposed of and the rightful owners want them back?

Left my car unused for a month or more quite often, no-one complains

It looks like it's mostly covered here.
Can't imagine bikes being seen as any different to cars.

If you sell a vehicle, owners can claim the money raised up to a year afterwards (minus your removal, storage and disposal costs).

[rmurphy195]

I can't imagine bikes being left unattended for the periods mentioned in this thread -it wouldn't happen here (South Brum) - for example

I got chatting over the fence to a tenant of a house whose garden backs onto ours. He dropped it out that he'd just been convicted of bike theft. Saw the bike at the side of the road, apparently, didn't know whose it was so he took it. When I commented that maybe he didn't know who it belonged to, but he knew who it didn't belong to, he thought for a bit then replied - "Oh, I see you don' t agree with that sort of thing then".

Leave it in the front garden and one of the local scrappies will drive by and pick it up for you - they have an unwritten rule, apparently, that if 'owt metal is left on the front garden within a few inches of the boundary it's "fair game". I politely disagreed, and for some reason he became quite threatening. Don't understand it at all.

So - no problem with abandoned bikes in our part of the world, they do get removed quite promptly

[Bmblbzzz]

And it's the case round here (don't know about Cambridge) that a sizeable proportion of abandoned bikes removed are actually remains of thefts: a frame stripped of components, a locked wheel left and the rest of the bike (unlocked) taken, that kind of thing.

[jollytiddlywink]

I'd be happy to see abandoned bikes removed from busy bike racks after a fair period of time, and after fair warning (a notice prominently posted at the entrance to the racks, preferably with a label on the bike saying 'we think this is abandoned. If it's yours and isn't abandoned, please contact us [email/phone]. Otherwise it will be removed a month from [day's date].

What I object to is bike removal people doing a sweep round, spotting a bike that hasn't been tagged with a warning, thinking, "well, I see it here a lot, so we'll cut it off the stand anyway" and then taking the bike. My Uni did this to my bike two weeks ago.

I got it back, but I'm not happy about it, not least because the Uni "replaced" my two D-locks (a high-security Kryptonite lock with a steel cable, and a medium-high security Masters lock, total RRP of about 75 quid) with two basic medium security Oxford locks with a RRP of 25 quid.