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I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent. We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhab
by jmnicolas 9y ago
I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent.
We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhabitants.
The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown from the 14th floor etc etc
We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes.
Tax payer money well spent?
- rdtsc 9y ago> stolen and found in Africa That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to impress their peers.
- kiliankoe 9y agoSame idea as stealing them in Germany and selling them further east. You're not going to find buyers locally, and shipping a lot of stolen bikes to somewhere where you can offload them for cheap is probably a somewhat viable business.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Joeri 9y agoThere was a very broadly reported crane theft a while ago in belgium. It was odd because nobody in western europe would buy a stolen crane. It turns out construction machines are often stolen and sold in africa where nobody checks the paperwork. Probably the same story applies to these bikes.
- Torwald 9y agoIf that was unexpected to you, I'll take it you don't know France very well. People send stuff back to Africa all the time. I can't say anything about the bike (obviously), but I can tell you what an African friend of mine does for a living; in the middle of Europe. He sends stuff back to Africa. What he does is he rents out a container on a ship and then collects the payload in small units. I advertises in the African community (mainly Togo) and sells small amount of space on that container. People want to send stuff to their relatives on the continent all the time. I hope my mildly related anecdote was helpful.
- nitrogen 9y agoIn inland southern California there is (or was, last time I was there) a Polynesian community that's established enough for similar container-shipping companies to arise to send things to their families still on the islands.
- donttrack 9y agoWas in Paris last year. I thought I was in Africa..
- retox 9y agoWhat is the ethnic makeup of that town, if you don't mind my asking.