Bicycles that have been left abandoned or discarded in TransLink’s bike parkades, including the local at Maple Meadows Station, will be removed and donated to charity over the coming weeks.
TransLink reminds users that long-term storage in bike parkades is prohibited to ensure customers have space for same-day use. This cleanout is intended to free up bike parking space before the spring and summer months, when the parkades are most used by customers.
Starting next week, transit police will place a removable tag on all bicycles stored in parkades and take down detailed descriptions of the bikes. Two weeks later, starting on Jan. 26, police will remove any bicycles that match the recorded descriptions and have tags remaining on them.
Police databases and 529 Garage, an online service to report stolen bicycles in the community, will be used to check if the abandoned bicycles were stolen.
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All bikes that have not been reported as stolen will be donated to the PEDAL Society’s Pedals for the People Program. The PEDAL Society is a non-profit organization that provides bikes to Metro Vancouver residents in need of affordable transportation.
Metro Vancouver has the largest transit-integrated Bike Parkade network in Canada, with 11 bike parkades at TransLink stations and 560 total spots for bicycles. Each parkade is a fully lit, indoor, glass-walled facility equipped with CCTV video surveillance and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They cost $1 a day, capped at $8 per month.
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