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Why do so many bikes end up underwater? The reasons can be weird and varied : NPR


Will her bike get caught in that canal?

AURORE BELOT / AFP via Getty Images


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AURORE BELOT / AFP via Getty Images


Will her bike get caught in that canal?

AURORE BELOT / AFP via Getty Images

When you look at a water path, you can expect aquatic life and sometimes a piece of trash. But the reality in many urban metropolises is that hiding beneath the surface of any waterway can be an astounding number of … bicycles.

It’s a strange social phenomenon that has forced bike-sharing companies to fish thousands of their rental bikes from rivers in southern China; and a rental company that simply went out of business in Rome because too many of their bikes were thrown in the Tiber.

In Amsterdam, 15,000 bicycles are pulled from the canals each year – a number that has really improved over the years.

Why do so many of these wheeled ships meet a watery grave? And what happens to a bike once it has changed terrain?

Jody Rosen is a contributing writer to New York Times Magazines and The author of Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle. He joined All things Considered to unravel this maritime mystery.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Highlights of the interview

About the popularity of this trend around the world

This is a phenomenon that I first noticed because I started seeing news items from many different places. You know, a Citi Bike in New York City where I live showed up at a dock, the kind that was blistered with oysters and wheels. I started searching on Google online and noticed that this is a very common phenomenon in at least three continents. So it’s certainly a common problem, but the extent of the problem is, I think, by definition unknown because it’s hidden, after all. I mean, there are bicycles covered by the waterways of the world. So it’s not something for which we can have accurate or reliable statistics by definition.

Citi Bike is the most popular bike-sharing service available in New York City.

Image of Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty


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Image of Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty


Citi Bike is the most popular bike-sharing service available in New York City.

Image of Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty

On the existing documentation of this online

When you see the bike go in there and slide under the water, there is only a certain satisfaction, a certain freedom in it. And I say that not because I did it myself, mind you. This is a practice recorded online, for example, on YouTube that is quite comprehensive. So there are a lot of videos that you can watch where people throw their bikes into the water and make videos of it for fun and sports.

So that’s definitely a factor. But there’s all sorts of other vandalism surrounding this, which I think is interesting. If we go back to the city of Amsterdam, where there are a lot of bicycles, it is indeed one of the top bike cities in the world. And there are many canals. It’s an ideal environment for cycling or drowning. And historically, it’s been such a big deal that there’s a core of the city they call “bicycle fishermen” there that the city uses to dredge bicycles out of the canal.

On the role of bike-sharing services in increasing

That’s what I think is behind the current popular phenomenon. The fact that these bike programs are growing around the world, which I think we can say is a good thing – we need more bikes in the city – but simply surrounding them with more than. And in fact, you can imagine that people feel a little more punished, that a potential cyclist would feel less guilty about throwing a bike in the water if it was a bike. shared bike has a bank or some kind of corporate sponsor logo. You know, the fender is the opposite of some joe-schmoe’s bike.

There may be what you might call a political dimension to this. We are witnessing an increasingly heated debate about what types of vehicles belong on the streets of cities. Motorists are reacting to the growing number of bicycles on the streets, sometimes with annoyance and sometimes violence. So maybe at least these drowned bikes, these dumped and vandalized bikes reflect an ongoing battle for right to the road.

In China, we also had a case of people stating that the reason they threw their bicycles into the water was because the bicycles invaded their privacy. These bike-sharing programs actually track riders using apps on their mobile phones. And this is ironic because at one point in the 19th century, the bicycle was actually seen as a liberating machine, a means of liberation, giving people a kind of personal means of transportation. new, a new kind of freedom for them. never experienced before. Yes, now there are bikes that scout their riders. So there can be complex and political motives intruding

People in Shanghai ride Ofo (L) and Mobike bikes.

JOHANNES EISELE / AFP via Getty Images


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JOHANNES EISELE / AFP via Getty Images


People in Shanghai ride Ofo (L) and Mobike bikes.

JOHANNES EISELE / AFP via Getty Images

What happens to the bikes when they are restored?

This is another mystery. And we know that in certain places, such as in Amsterdam, they are recycled. There is a program to recycle them there. And one of the things I think is funny about the Amsterdam example is that officials there attribute this phenomenon in part to being drunk. You know, people who might have had too much to drink, maybe they’re on their way home from a long night in a bar, they might see a bike and say, “What the hell?” they feel a little fun and they throw it in.

As it turns out, many of those bikes are recycled into various types of food packaging, including the metal used in beer cans. So maybe there’s a kind of ecosystem at work, where someone, a drunk, throws a bike into the water, that bike ends up being extracted by a fishing boat with a bike, it gets recycled into a beer can and another drunk comes along, drinks too much of that beer, throws another bike in the water, and we go around.

This story has been adapted for the web by Manuela Lopez Restrepo



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