The urban roadkill chronicles

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by PHILIP PREVILLE

First it was the Christmas trees: due to numerous January snowfalls, the city's annual collection of abandoned evergreens was put off for two full weeks, resulting in a mess of trees, big and small, windblown into the streets and crushed by cars. Now that the snow has melted from the sidewalks, the new unsightly spectre is the bicycles--the deformed, crippled bicycles, mangled beyond recognition by snow removal equipment.

Alas for bicycle owners, the news only gets worse. City bylaws forbid cyclists from attaching their bikes to parking meters, lampposts or any other civic infrastructure other than bike racks. And since the city removes all bike racks during the winter months, it's essentially illegal to park your bike anywhere outside during the winter.

The bottom line: people who park their bikes outside during the winter do so at their own risk, and the city won't pay for any damages caused by public works operations. :

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