Lenton58 

I've not lived in Canada for many years, and I don't know about urban life in the USA. So I am wondering and asking myself this question:

If a person can provide some evidence that a bicycle has been abandoned, is there an authority in either Canadian or American cities that one can appeal to in order to gain possession? Some apparently abandoned bicycles that have appeared in these many pages are just too rich and enviable to end up in some destructive city removal program.

One interesting segue involves something I came across on my last visit "home" to Vancouver in 2017: not far from a friend's downtown shop in a landmark city square was a scruffy, but otherwise very tasty bicycle anchored to a pole. I asked my friend about it because it was there every day for some weeks — apparently unmoved. My friend told be it was a "decoy" bicycle. Bicycle theft had become so rampant that city authorities had staked out some bicycles with electronic devices installed in them. If removed, they could be tracked and perhaps lead to the apprehension of the culprits — chop shop operators and so on. I took this as more than just BS because Mr friend is very up on city affairs.