CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh

"Bike recycling scheme to clear tenement stairs"

(13 posts)
  • Started 9 years ago by chdot
  • Latest reply from threefromleith

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  1. chdot
    Admin

    Slightly confusing article about getting abandoned bikes removed and also that fire brigade can remove 'obstructions' - which presumably they always could(?)

    "

    Green councillor Melanie Main, who is spearheading the drive, said the growing number of abandoned bicycles in common stairs has become a “real problem” over the past couple of years.

    She insisted that “hundreds” of left-behind bikes were cluttering up shared spaces across the city, and revealed plans for a mass clean-up next year that could see as many as 100 cycles removed from Marchmont in one morning.

    ...

    cycles should be handed to the police to be recycled or, if removed by residents themselves, donated to an outside organisation. 

    Bikes cannot be sold on for profit.

    ...

    
Under the new rules, bikes causing an obstruction – defined as those where the gap between the handlebar and the wall is less than 800mm – can also be forcibly removed by fire crews if owners refuse to do it themselves.

    "

    http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/bike-recycling-scheme-to-clear-tenement-stairs-1-3893242

    Posted 9 years ago #

  2. neddie
    Member

    The good value bikes available at the "Bike Station" are a double edged sword.

    On the one hand they allow students and others to obtain a bike cheaply and get about - 'more of us'. This is a good thing.

    On the other hand, the bikes are so cheap, there is no incentive to take them back, or sell them on, and they are often just discarded or left for someone else to deal with (normally the long term residents in the stair). This is a bad thing.

    Sometimes bikes are left over the summer holidays, with good intentions to come back and collect, but are then forgotten, or plans change and are abandoned.

    Perhaps students/ short term stair residents need some education on "It's not OK just to dump stuff you no longer want in the stair".

    I've taken abandoned bikes back to the Bike Station before and often they've said "oh, we've sold that bike 3 times already!"

    Posted 9 years ago #

  3. PS
    Member

    The good value bikes available at the "Bike Station" are a double edged sword.

    To be fair, students have a long history of abandoning bikes and bike shaped objects that stretches well back before the time of the Bike Station.

    Posted 9 years ago #

  4. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Perhaps students/ short term stair residents need some education

    This also goes for buy-to-let landlords who seem to think it's acceptable to rip the fittings / furniture out of a flat inbetween tenants and just dump it on the street / in the general direction of a bin and let someone else who actually lives in the street get in touch with the council to have it removed (at taxpayer's expense). With the new university term starting it seems everywhere we've been walking is plagued with sofas, mattresses, carpets, boxes of general junk, curtains, broken household fittings in, on, next to or nowhere near the communal waste bins.

    When we were at university, the council dealt with the problem at end of term by doing special rounds with the bin lorries in each street, where the lorry would wait at the end of each street in a given place on a given date at a given time and accept any "donations" of unwanted junk.

    Posted 9 years ago #

  5. SRD
    Moderator

    The Edinburgh Uni student union has various 'recycling' schemes, but perhaps more for crockery and small items, not furniture.

    Posted 9 years ago #

  6. threefromleith
    Member

    I'll be getting my measuring tape out to the two bikes my neighbours bought over a year ago, rode a couple of times and then chained to the railings between two landings to gather dust.

    It's a nightmare trying to squeeze past them carrying my bike or when carrying bags of shopping in both hands. My Mum has bruised her arm by accidentally clattering into them a couple of times and the postie keeps having a go at me about them being a danger to him, even though they're not on my floor and don't belong to me (and I keep telling him that!).

    Posted 9 years ago #

  7. Nelly
    Member

    People can be very selfish.

    I am just back off a weekend in Aviemore and could barely find a spot for our MTBs in the (excellent bike shed) of the apartment we rented.

    Having been at the same place 3 times over 3 years now, there are a dozen bikes (some actually very good kit) rusting away, flat tyres and covered in dust - some of which have never moved.

    Quite incredible !

    Posted 9 years ago #

  8. acsimpson
    Member

    Is it acceptable to loosen and rotate the handlebars on a stairwell bike once it's been there long enough to gain a layer of dust? Bars parallel to wheels makes them much easier to walk past.

    Posted 9 years ago #

  9. DaveC
    Member

    "if removed by residents themselves, donated to an outside organisation."

    This bit would worry me. One vendictive grumpy stairwell resident can remove your new bike and say its been dumped, giving it to an 'outside organisation'. Who is to say the bikes have been there for ages or not? Whose word do they believe? The owner or the grumpy resident who doesn't like cyclists?

    Posted 9 years ago #

  10. kaputnik
    Moderator

    @Acsimpson I've done this on previous occasions with bikes obviously long-term abandoned, and left them deliberately very loose to let anyone moving it in the future know that it's not safe to ride in its current state. Yes I know it should be obvious that a bike with parallel handlebars isn't road safe, but there are people out there who would straighten it up and assume finger-stiff sufficient.

    Posted 9 years ago #

  11. acsimpson
    Member

    "there are people out there who would straighten it up and assume finger-stiff sufficient."

    The mechanic who used to work at Halfords for instance, but that's a story for another thread.

    Posted 9 years ago #

  12. dougal
    Member

    No sooner than the groundfloor of our stairwell had been emptied of the last BSO than two new bikes and a washing machine took up residence. I swear people think it's a holding ground.

    Posted 9 years ago #

  13. threefromleith
    Member

    @acsimpson I'm tempted to do that to the bikes on our stair (especially since I found out from another annoyed neighbour yesterday that the couple who own them are no longer together, so the 'hers' bike will not be moving again).

    Posted 9 years ago #

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