Cycling in Waterloo Region

[Chris]

What boggles my mind is the theft of (usually front) wheels. Yes, they come off easily, and have no serial numbers, but is there really that much of a market for stolen wheels? Fairly regularly I see dodgy-looking characters riding bikes downtown with an extra wheel in one hand, and I figure it's rather unlikely that they are just carrying spare wheels around. 

So many of the crappy bike racks around town encourage people to just lock up a front or back wheel unless you have a long cable or multiple u-locks (and a proper locking strategy).

For every person rolling around with a front wheel there is someone with an entire bike minus the front wheel. Get enough of each and you can reassemble many bikes. If you have ever witnessed the bike traffic at Bridgeport and Regina you've seen this in action. People with bike trailers filled with all sorts of odds and ends.

[clasher]

Bike thieves steal wheels to fix other stolen bikes and they mix up all the parts at chop shops around town too. A bike without wheels is also more likely to be abandoned and will get harvested for its parts too.

[ijmorlan]

My stolen bike saga has a somewhat happy ending... a few months after my second (brand new) bike was stolen I got a call from the Cambridge police. My bike was found when they busted that giant warehouse of stolen bikes this summer. Unfortunately the thieves had already chopped it up quite a bit, but my credit card insurance paid for King St Cycles to bring it back to the original condition.

Now my bikes live indoors... even having my new bike chained to the snowblower with a Kryptonite lock wasn't enough to keep someone from stealing it.

One question I have about big warehouse busts is how the entire inventory is handled. Obviously some of the bikes will be identified, proven to be stolen, seized, and returned to their owners if they can be found. But what about ones that can’t be individually proven to be stolen? I would hope that at some point, enough stolen property mixed into a warehouse should make the possessor of the stolen goods liable to have the entire property and its complete contents confiscated, on the theory that it is simply not believable that if, say, 10% of bikes mixed through a warehouse operated by a proven thief are stolen, the other 90% are mostly legit.

I fear that the legal system may be too lenient on crooked business enterprises. But I don’t actually know.

[clasher]

Most recovered bikes are sold at the police auction In Breslau at Jutzi auctions. I went once and most of the bikes were crappy tire and Walmart bikes, many were bid up past their new price. The few high-end ones seemed to be bid up unreasonably high. I guess auction fever was running high that day.

[Canard]

Beautiful day for a ride, today - I was out in a T-shirt!

[danbrotherston]

Official response from the city of waterloo about the bike lane in uptown:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Enforcement won't begin until the bike lanes are completed in the spring. We're handing out these notices in the meantime <a href="https://t.co/qoupVFL8d3">pic.twitter.com/qoupVFL8d3</a></p>&mdash; City of Waterloo (@citywaterloo) <a href="https://twitter.com/citywaterloo/status/956193517197406209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 24, 2018</a></blockquote>

https://twitter.com/citywaterloo/status/...7197406209

Which quite frankly does nothing but train people to believe even more strongly that they're allowed to park in a marked no parking zone.

I no longer care to follow any bylaws in the city which I don't feel like following.  I am just done.  If I get a ticket, I'll take it straight to court.

[KevinL]

Utterly unacceptable. If 1) it's not a parking zone as it's a future bike lane and 2) shouldn't be used anyway due to an unfinished surface, parking should not be tolerated, period.

Put up those half-sawhorse no-parking barriers, or some other physical, noticeable deterrent. Don't let people get away with it and give them an 'oops, sorry' note afterward.

[danbrotherston]

Utterly unacceptable. If 1) it's not a parking zone as it's a future bike lane and 2) shouldn't be used anyway due to an unfinished surface, parking should not be tolerated, period.

Put up those half-sawhorse no-parking barriers, or some other physical, noticeable deterrent. Don't let people get away with it and give them an 'oops, sorry' note afterward.

It's worse than an "ooops sorry" note, it's a "this is fine for a little while" note.  It literally contradicts the signage.  Quite frankly, it seems bylaw is terrified to tell people they're parking illegally.  I wonder why that might be......................

[jamincan]

I think they're afraid of pissing off businesses.

I distinctly remember when King St. reopened. A lot of my cycling friends were really excited to bike to Uptown to check out the new lanes, only to find them completely blocked off by cars. The message to us all was pretty clear.

[timc]

Is there any plan to maintain the protected bike lanes on Columbia Street, west of Fischer-Hallman?

I was there today and noticed that there are still piles of snow in the lane, although there are bike lane signs which imply to me that there is, in fact, a bike lane there.

Is this just a case of another "unfinished" bike lane? Will it be maintained in the future, or is this what we should expect?

[Coke6pk]

Can someone go to Dollarama and stock up on those small orange pylons and early in the morning lay them out.... bet they would just remain there as no one would remove them....

Coke

[timc]

Can someone go to Dollarama and stock up on those small orange pylons and early in the morning lay them out.... bet they would just remain there as no one would remove them....

Or arrange for a bunch of people to park their bikes in that area for the day.

[danbrotherston]

Is there any plan to maintain the protected bike lanes on Columbia Street, west of Fischer-Hallman?

I was there today and noticed that there are still piles of snow in the lane, although there are bike lane signs which imply to me that there is, in fact, a bike lane there.

Is this just a case of another "unfinished" bike lane? Will it be maintained in the future, or is this what we should expect?

I was told by a CoW staff member that the lane is considered finished and *should* be plowed.  If it is not, please send me a picture (or post here and ask) and I will send it to him and see what's up.

I was also under the impression it was uncleared but I hadn't been out there in a while when I asked him about it last time.

[danbrotherston]

Another day, another infuriating walk down King St. to look at all the cars parked in the obviously a no parking zone.  

No flyers, no tickets, no nothing.  I was passed by three separate cyclists riding on the sidewalk.  I have zero doubt in my mind they'd be ticketed for doing so in uptown.

   

And just for bonus fury, here's a car parked on the tracks.

   

[Canard]

I just avoid the area now - I get too angry going through there.