Sunday 7 December 2008

Queens Road bike parking

This is the bike park outside the student union, in Queen's Road, Clifton.

Of the 6 bikes locked up here, only two can be considered functional.


One has been stripped to the frame, another, whose owner took the front wheel off and locked it is without a front fork.



At the other end of the rack, one has a stamped on rear wheel and missing front wheel. The bike behind it has the handlebar clamp on the stem missing, which is odd. Perhaps whoever was trying to steal the forks got interrupted, but why remove that part of the stem? Maybe the goal was to steal the stem, or cripple the bike so it ends up there overnight, when the real frame strip can take place.

Bristol: don't commute on a bike you value.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice to see it's nothing but the best for top drawer Bristol University students.

I'm guessing the Uni car park is a different story though?

SteveL said...

At the students union, anyone can park under the building on a weekend, so you are free to try it. The pool is worth a visit.

Uni staff parking isn't free, but they have turned every bit of front garden in converted housing over to it. But staff get to pay, which is not the case for say, most of us who work up in the North Fringe.

Anonymous said...

"... you are free to try it."

?

Car-free already, thanks.

No, I was just imagining that the University car-park is contrastingly full of carefully tended gleaming porsches, mazeratis, BMWs belonging to the junior Great and Good.

SteveL said...

Surprisingly not. It's the students who have the fancy cars, not the staff.

Anonymous said...

I work at the University and some students leave their bikes locked to the racks for months on end. Security services eventually stick a note on it saying it will be forcibly removed, but often the wannabee thiefs have got their first. The trashed bikes in your photos may have been dumped by students who couldnt be bothered to take them home at the end of their course.

Anonymous said...

Has anyone thought that it is not just students that use those hoops? What is the legality of someone just removing a bike that has been there a while? Would that not also be theft? What if the student is working abroad, come back and there bike is gone? Surely they would just report it stolen, I don't think bikes should be removed unless adequate notice is given, which I believe is what happens now?

SteveL said...

@Anonymous -I don't know about the process for moving abandoned bikes. At parkway its over a weekend, which can inconvenience people who leave crap bikes that wont get stolen there over the weekend.

I think we ought to consider what to do about abandoned bikes round the city, as they don't benefit anyone. Better to move them, hold them and turn them over to the people in Easton who fix up bikes.