Bicycles

My Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a vehicle as “any conveyance for people, goods, etc., esp. on land.”  A bicycle would thus appear to be included in the provisions of By-law 2.  I accept that properly maintained and regularly used bicycles are not rubbish for the purposes of By-law 9, although this does cover “other material” as well.  However, Boronia’s landings must be extraordinarily spacious if a parked bicycle does not cause any obstruction.  Even slight obstruction would be totally unacceptable if the landings are part of an emergency exit route.

I agree arbitrary confiscation, especially if the owners are known, is not acceptable, but there do appear to be means for removal of abandoned goods after a suitable interval.

@excathedra said:
I agree arbitrary confiscation, especially if the owners are known, is not acceptable, but there do appear to be means for removal of abandoned goods after a suitable interval.

Does anybody actually read my column?  I guess not – so here’s another link to it.  It covers the confiscation and distribution of bikes to charities.

But for those of you who don’t need to know all that, unlike the Residential Tenancies Act, the current strata laws don’t have a provision for abandoned goods but the new laws will – or at least there will be provisions for regulations covering this (see below).

It’s hard to see that they will stray far from the tenancies regulations which allow landlords to give fair warning that they are going to dispose of abandoned goods, sell the goods once the deadline is up and then give the tenant the proceeds, minus the cost of the sales, if they turn up later.  For that reason, many landlords and owners corps give the bikes to charity because it is less complicated and …. well … it’s just a good thing to do.

But first you need to have a bike audit and to do that … Look, just read the column.  You know you want to. 

125 Disposal of abandoned goods on common property

The regulations may make provision for or with respect to the following matters: (a) conferring power on an owners corporation to store or dispose of, or authorise the disposal of, goods left on common property, (b) notices to owners and other persons as to disposal or proposed disposal of goods by an owners corporation, (c) the passing of title to any goods on disposal by an owners corporation, (d) the payment of the proceeds of disposal of goods by an owners corporation, (e) conferring jurisdiction on the Tribunal to make directions and orders relating to the disposal of goods, including orders for the payment of compensation and as to the payment of the costs of disposing of goods.  

Again, I refer to my column from a couple of weeks ago that explains the principle of the bike audit.

Find out who owns which bike by telling all residents that if bikes aren’t tagged with the name and flat number of their owners, within say two weeks,  they will be considered abandoned and given to charity.

As there are no provisions for the disposal of abandoned goods under strata law, this is totally illegal but absolutely sensible.

Better that than angry cyclists calling the cops because they thought they could leave their bikes anywhere but it turned out they couldn’t.

I also refer to Peter C’s post (No. 3) about creating a bike store somewhere.