Hey Erick, all,

In Boulder, we have an agreement with our local state school. We get a call from them about twice a year to go pick up the bikes they've cleaned off of the racks. Based on everyone else's responses, it sounds like we find much better bikes than some other groups. Could be the affluence of CU students? Boulder does have a reputation for having a lot of trust funders, for whatever that's worth. What it means for us is that we do wind up with some fancy bikes coming from the school. I think it's a function of the bike racks being outside huge dorm buildings, and for a lot of students their bike is the last thing they think of--if they think of it at all--when it's time to move out and pack the car.

The school has it's own little bike rental setup, and they get first dibs on the abandoned bikes. They clean and refurbish them, and use them in their own rental/checkout fleet for students. We sometimes get the ones which have been through that program donated to us, and they're usually beat to crap.

I would echo what someone else said in this thread. Whatever agreement or arrangement you have, make sure the bikes have been through the process that the school or police department has before you get your hands on them. That way, if/when someone comes in 9 months to a year later looking for their "red 10 speed...i think it was a raleigh or a trek..." you can let them know that the cops held it for however long before your shop got it. we've had this happen several times. We also have several storage units full of bikes waiting to be worked on or claimed, and unless the bike happens to be in the shop at the moment when they call or drop in, there's little we can do to help them find their bike.

There is a local individual here who's researched what it takes to claim a bike that one thinks is abandoned, via proper police procedure, filing a claim, etc. He's done a lot of work, and wants us to help publicize the procedure so that community members can reclaim local bikes they think are abandoned, but the few times I've spoken with him, it just seems counter to our mission, and we have enough to do without explaining obscure police procedures to folks who want to claim what may very well not be an abandoned bike. I only bring this person up because he's come to us a few times saying that the police mistakenly gave us a bike he had "dibs" on via this procedure. I had to explain to him that there's not much we can do, since we don't catalog incoming bikes since they've been sitting at the PD for at least 90 days.

I also forwarded your email to a contact I have at the Univerity's bike station/transportation office. If he gets back to me I'll let you know. Any helpful info I will post to the entire list.

josh.



On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 7:59 PM, Erik Stockmeier <eriks@therecyclery.org> wrote:
Thanks for all the replies.  These arrangements both touch on what we have with our local u right now, which is basically that we show up and take what they don't want.  The problem is that this often comes back to hit us in a double whammy.  We have to make a bunch of trips and pull these things out of storage, 2 at a time using an elevator and everything, we end up scrapping 90% of them and then the bikes that they sold themselves at the campus bike sale come into our open shops looking like hell.  Now we are talking to the school's environmental group to try and set up some kind of lasting partnership.  We've had mixed (almost no) success working with these ephemeral student groups in the past, but what the hey.


On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 5:25 PM, jim <hifilofi@gmail.com> wrote:
The Milwaukee Bicycle Collective has a working relationship with UW-Milwaukee for donations.  This past semester break we received about 50 bikes that were abandoned for at least 6 months.  We got their attention by cold calling, saying essentially that you got em, dont want em, we need em and the campus police were more than willing to comply.  State schools have a fairly rigid acquisition process, but we have had more success with the state school than our private college (Marquette).  Most importantly though, in accepting the donations, you agree to accept all of the bikes they are unloading and most bikes happen to be utter shit.  Worse than what we would consider our worst bikes (consider the detritus of seven years of donations) we have ended up recycling a good portion of them. 


Jim
On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Erik Stockmeier <eriks@therecyclery.org> wrote:
Are there any groups out there with strong partnerships with local municipalities or campuses to collect abandoned bicycles?  I know the Recyclery (Chicago) and many other groups certainly pick up donations from police departments and the like, but we have a number of volunteers and a campus environmental group working on setting up a structured collection program and are looking for ways to proceed.  Do you, for example, have a specific notice or flyer you attach to bikes?  We are thinking of something that says "hello, this bike looks abandoned.  if it is yours, you can fix it up at the recyclery.  Otherwise it will be removed..."

Anyhow, just wondering if anyone has already done this.  Thanks for your help!

Erik
@ The Recyclery (Chicago)

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