Overview
The Greene Space presents WNYC’s Abandoned Bike Project as news becomes art in Hudson Square. Pedestrian and vehicular audiences will be able to see distorted bikes, bike parts and projections of abandoned bikes from all over New York City through the large storefront windows facing Varick and Charlton Streets.
WNYC called on listeners to find, photograph and map all the abandoned bikes blighting New York City streets. The response was overwhelming. We received over 500 pictures of busted bicycles: rusted racers, mangled mountain bikes with bent frames and pilfered parts. These castoff cycles from around the city — each left to rot, chained to public property — become a captivating catalog of civic nuisance, a collection of the detritus of urban mobility in a busy city.
WNYC submitted the photographs, locations and a map to the city to facilitate removal, but due to a cumbersome reporting process and strict removal criteria, only a small fraction of the bikes have been removed. An abandoned bike blocking one neighbor’s bike parking spot, is property to another.
For more, visit the following links:
http://transportationnation.org/2012/06/11/most-abandoned-bikes-wont-be-removed/
http://transportationnation.org/2012/04/27/help-us-map-all-the-abandoned-bikes/