Bicycle lost and found: Leaving your bike on the bus

In the world of bicycling, one of the biggest mysteries to me is how someone can lose a bicycle.

I can understand a person losing track of a bicycle that is stolen and ditched, but apparently people will occasionally park a bike and then not retrieve it. Do they forget it? Did they die? Were they whisked away by aliens?

For instance, the Seattle Metro transit system reported that 863 people put their bicycles on bus racks in 2007 and forgot to remove them.

Not  recent problem

2007 was not a singular year of forgetfulness. The Seattle P-I reports that the problem dates back to 1994 when buses were first fitted with bike racks.

The transit agency quickly ran out of room in its lost and found department and began contracting out the business of storing lost-and-found bikes and reuniting them with their forgetful owners.

Charity

That duty now falls to the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, which has offices and lost-and-found space at Seattle's BikeStation on Third Avenue. The P-I checked Thursday, and 44 bikes were stored there.

Kent Peterson, Bicycle Alliance commute specialist and author of Kent's Bike Blog, looks after these bikes. He told the P-I that often they're BMXs left on the bus by forgetful kids, or a commuter gets to talking to a friend and plain forgets about his bike.

The forgotten bikes are stored at the BikeStation for about a month before they're given away.

Apparently Seattle isn't the only city where folks lose their bikes on buses. The Santa Clara Valley (CA) Transportation Authority uses photos of people putting bikes on buses to illustrate its “lost and found” services.