Abandoned Bikes in Parking Garages?

[btj]

I don’t have any suggestions but I have definitely been wondering this exact same thing. My apartment building bike cage is pretty full and my guess is quite a few of the bikes are abandoned.

[jrenaut]

We don’t have that problem in our building, but we also don’t have a lot of bike commuters. You have to request a bike parking pass each month, which is a hassle, and you’re supposed to display it on the bike when it’s in the garage. But I’ve only been asked to show my pass maybe 3 times in 8+ months of parking here almost every day, and probably half the bikes here don’t have passes on them.

I think, in general, the monthly opt-in parking passes are pretty annoying. And it’s all pretty useless if you don’t check up on whether or not the passes are being displayed.

The one advantage is that the pass has the bike owner’s phone number on it (we’re inside a secure garage), so you can call someone if they’ve locked their bike in the cage with the tail blinkie still on.

[DaveK]

@jrenaut 14843 wrote:

The one advantage is that the pass has the bike owner’s phone number on it (we’re inside a secure garage), so you can call someone if they’ve locked their bike in the cage with the tail blinkie still on.

I like this… we have a bike locker in the garage that our building electronic keycards can access, but we have to specifically request it with the building manager. There’s a few people that store bikes in there and some bikes I wonder if anyone is coming back for. I don’t know that they have a specific policy to deal with those bikes though. It really hasn’t been an issue, the locker is pretty big and rarely fills up.

[eminva]

We have the same set up as DaveK . . . we also have a few bikes that seem to live there permanently, including one highly covetable “classic” bike in excellent condition that has been in the same spot for months if not years. It wasn’t a problem, but our building has a new tenant that apparently has a lot of employees with a major commitment to bicycle commuting, so now it is pretty crowded in there (just wait until summer!).

I would consider raising the issue with our property management office, but my office is moving across the street in three months, so it will be moot for me soon.

Liz

P.S. This thread brings up a question about bike rack etiquette — a couple of weeks ago, when I was parking my bike in the a.m., I noticed a bike with its headlight still on. I had no way of contacting the person so I turned it off and left a note. I was afraid if it stayed on all day he wouldn’t have any battery power left for the commute home. Did I do the right thing?

[rcannon100]

Did I do the right thing?

I would not think twice about it. Cyclists are a good community; we look after each other.

[jrenaut]

@rcannon100 14872 wrote:

I would not think twice about it. Cyclists are a good community; we look after each other.

Agreed, I’ve turned off lights before in the garage when the bike wasn’t in a cage.

[JeffC]

I looked into this awhile back to try to persuade my building management (Federael Govt in my case) to get rid of some abandoned bikes but all they ended up doing was getting more racks rather than actually removing the offending bikes. I know that the Federal Govt has rules about obviously abandoned property and the right of the building management to confiscate such property. I pointed this out to the management but they got defensive and were afraid some wayward employee would file a complaint. I also discovered some research indicating that the NIH in Bethesda had these elaborate rules for registering your bike to park each month.

It seems that what worked best to ultimately remove some of the unused bikes were occasional emails sent out by management to employees reminding them that the racks were only for short term overnight parking as well as signs near the racks pointing this out. Also, at times our garage is power cleaned so that no one can park there over the weekend. I think they only mean cars, not bikes, but I have seen this bring people to remove bikes for fear of them getting damaged during power clearning. Obviously if a bike was really abandoned during power clearning, it would not be removed by the owner. I tried to bring this to building management’s attention that this was an indication that the bike was really abandoned. I noticed that they had to move some of the racks and broke the locks on some of the bikes and pushed over to a corner, at least they are not taking up rack space any longer.

[dasgeh]

I often wonder about the same thing in my Federal agency’s garage, especially now that the bike racks are ALREADY filling up. I imagine Spring will be packed!

A couple things I think about: Officially, we’re not supposed to leave bikes even overnight. Sometimes, I do. In fact, I have two bikes in there at the moment, because I biked in one day, got home another way, biked in the next day on a different bike. I also know a few people who leave a bike in the garage that they use for fitness (we’re convenient to Hanes Point), but never take home. There are some bikes that look clearly abandoned, so it’d be nice to have a clean out, but I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the ability to leave bikes that actually get used there for whatever reason.

I’ve thought about proposing that our agency pick a date a few weeks/months in the future, and decide that all bikes that are “abandoned” then are really abandoned. To figure out what’s abandoned, I’d put a hanger or sticky on all the bikes indicating that bikes with the note still on them will be removed on X date. Then I’d start the communication campaign — post something on our internal communication website, possibly as part of the drum up to bike to work week and put up signs in the garage and in our gym. Most importantly, I wouldn’t do the removal until a few weeks into Spring (some people don’t even think about bikes in the winter, even mild winters), and I’d start the communications way early. And I’d make it really easy to show a bike isn’t abandoned — just take off the hanger/sticky.

Anyway, that plan is totally from my head, because that’s what I think about when it’s hard to find a good spot.

[DaveK]

@eminva 14871 wrote:

we also have a few bikes that seem to live there permanently, including one highly covetable “classic” bike in excellent condition that has been in the same spot for months if not years.[/quote]

We have a few genuine classics in our locker – a 1950s Raleigh, a very rare 1980s Guerciotti/ALAN aluminum road bike with full original Dura-Ace, and occasionally a penny-farthing. I know who owns all of them though, so no use getting green with envy.

Quote:

P.S. This thread brings up a question about bike rack etiquette — a couple of weeks ago, when I was parking my bike in the a.m., I noticed a bike with its headlight still on. I had no way of contacting the person so I turned it off and left a note. I was afraid if it stayed on all day he wouldn’t have any battery power left for the commute home. Did I do the right thing?

I do this all the time, even on bikes I see outside bars.

[consularrider]

There are two bikes in the racks in our parking garage and one leaning up against a wall (federal agency fully occupying commercial building) that haven’t been moved in over a year. Some bikes seem to stay for weeks on end but do occasionally get moved. We’re not required to have any sort of bike pass and there are no formal rules on the rack use. About two years ago, our building management/bureau executive office put out an internal memo reminding people that bikes could not be stored here and that abandoned bikes would be removed. Nothing more happended.

[SerialCarpins]

Our apartment building’s racks are pretty full, but they require that everyone get a one time sticker registration that they have to display on the bike at all times…they then have contact info for all tenants in the building that have bikes and can match them up with their owners if need be. Periodically they removed bikes that are unregistered, and look abandoned (flat tires, etc)…then once a year they do a “spring cleaning”, and contact all people that have registered their bikes to make sure they are currently actively living in our building, or at least aware that they still have a bike there….they call and give a two week notice that they are cleaning out all bikes that they don’t hear from the owners of….not a bad system…we have about 40 or 50 bikes at any given time, and while it sometimes gets crowded, it never feels overwhelming or unreasonable…

[btj]

Interestingly, my condo building posted notices in the elevators today asking people who don’t use their bikes to make room for those that need the spots. Biggest problem is, if they are abandoned and residents have moved out, it won’t do any good. And my guess is most people who abandon their bikes aren’t too concerned about taking up space.

[ronwalf]

UMD tags suspected abandoned bikes and removes them a month or two later (often over break). Once removed, they post a general description of the bikes, and if they still aren’t claimed, they auction them off.

(what do you know, there’s an article about it in the student newspaper this week)

[rcannon100]

Thanks for all this!!!!!

[Author]

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