London Cycle Hire

Great as it seems to blame operators the people ending journeys on the towpaths and along the canal are surely boaters themselves?

I doubt that any boaters would throw bikes into the canal, and I have no doubt that they wouldn't park them on the towpath, given the very obvious risk that someone may opportunistically chuck them in.

Also is the "someone" who will chuck bikes in the water also boaters? It's something I've never really understood about the canal trust that when it suits them cyclists are evil but when you look at canal boats most if not all have a couple of bikes on them.

The C&RT certainly doesn't think cyclists are 'evil'. Having done a bit of work with them in the past, they have always considered the presence of cycling on the towpaths a good thing. It brings life to them and many people enjoy riding along there. The C&RT has in the past done a lot of good work in facilitating cycling on towpaths and run progressively better awareness campaigns to deal with the fast and reckless, or just plain unaware, riders. If you watch the towpath for any length of time you will see someone not riding in their or anyone else's interests, and they stink up the mood for everyone else. It's actually mostly been the canal user groups who have been most vociferous in their opposition to cycling, and the C&RT has been its defender.

They seem to be more upset that they can't charge them for the recovery of bikes(when it suits them to recover them).

I don't understand 'when it suits them to recover them'. Obviously, it will always 'suit' the C&RT to recover bikes, although they would rather avoid doing this work for obvious reasons.

As he says, his main requests are to ask people not to park bikes near water and/or to lock them to something, to prevent the problem being caused in the first instance.

Surely if they pull a bike from the canal then dump it out on any road and shoot them a message they would collect it.

Why would the C&RT 'dump' a recovered bike somewhere when that would obviously clutter the street somewhere and/or make it possible that someone might just chuck it back into the canal? It would be irresponsible, and quite possibly against their long-established rules for dealing with waste recovered from the waterways. It's also probably a fair assumption that most recovered bikes are damaged in some way, e.g. the buckled front wheel in the article, and dumping them somewhere wouldn't be very helpful, even were the operator's people then to come along to pick them up. They'd still be cluttering the street in the meantime.

It's also really open to abuse if they are taking "abandoned" bikes from the tow path and collecting them for a fee, the moment you pay people to recover dockless bikes they can easily find 100s a day and claim they pulled them all from canals.

The point he makes is simply that he would like the C&RT only to have an arrangement with the hire firms. It is, after all, providing a service to them--and, needless to say, the C&RT would not abuse such an arrangement. Obviously, he's not suggesting that any person should be able to claim payment for recovering a bike.