The Chainlink

Saw this on  www.reddit.com/r/chibike  Figured I'd give people a heads up here.

"This morning on my commute to work I saw a large City of Chicago DOT truck and some workers using a cutting torch to remove the u-locks from every bike that was locked up to the bike racks on the NE corner of Adams and Canal and then they were loading the bikes into the back of the truck. Anyone know why or what is happening to these bikes? It was probably 15 bikes in total from what I could see. Kind of alarming if you ask me because I could not see anything wrong with the way the bikes were locked up."

http://www.reddit.com/r/chibike/comments/180uqn/chicago_dot_cutting...

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You are correct sir. I did not stand there and watch them cut 15 bikes. I rode by and did a quick count on the handlebars I could see in the back of the truck. Next time I see something like this I will do some sleuthing at the time of the incident.
 
Kevin C 4.1 mi said:

I'll be willing to bet that the OP did not stand there and watch 15 bikes being removed (or that 15 bikes were removed).

Jim said:

I'd be interested to hear what this was.  I find it hard to believe there were 15 abandoned bikes.  The Chicago Municipal code requires bikes to be labeled with a sign indicating when the bicycle will be removed.  In my experience once one of those signs is placed on a bike people start picking the bike apart for parts, and pretty quickly there is just a frame and wheel type situation.

I figure you would have noticed the signs though...

Are the owners of these legally parked and locked bikes being compensated?

?? The takeaway here is that there may have been one or two bikes on that rack that were tagged for removal, and that the other bikes in the truck likely came from other sites.  The city typically allows a few weeks for removal once tagged.

No recent reports to the Chicago Stolen Bike Registry from this location.

Douglas Iverson said:

Are the owners of these legally parked and locked bikes being compensated?

We do abandoned bike removal about once a month, and sometimes we take a little longer to collect the bikes after they are tagged (they need to be tagged for at least a week before we can remove them.) This last collection was about 45 bikes. We actually tage the bikes in two places, just in case someone removes the tag (along with other parts of the bike, as Howard suggests.)

All of the bikes and frames are taken to Working Bikes and held for 30 days. Occasionally, a bike is mis-identified as abandoned and it gets removed. If this happens, you can contact our office and we get the bike back from Working Bikes. This is generally a problem when people go on vacation and they have impatient neighbors. I'm only doing abandoned bikes for a short time (until March,) but you can contact our office if you have questions about this.

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