KAMLOOPS – The whereabouts of two bike repair station stolen from Riverside Park and McArthur Island days apart are still unknown, and city staff are hoping for any tips that may help them recover the stations.
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A day after the city discovered one of the repair station was taken from McArthur Island on Wednesday, another in Riverside Park is also missing.
“For us, it’s been a matter of communication and reaching out to the media and to Crime Stoppers,” says Glen Cheetham from the City of Kamloops. “The main inconvenience is going to be to those folks in our community who have come to really appreciate the bike-repair stations. In fact, I assumed it was primary used by cyclists, but we’re hearing now that parents with strollers are using it.”
Each station, which consists of a bike rack, air pump, and tools to fix a bike, costs about $2,100. The only station remaining is one at the entrance to Kenna Cartwright Park near KRCC.
Cheryl Beattie, an avid cyclist who owns the Bicycle Cafe in Valleyview, says she actually needed it last week on a ride in Kenna Cartwright Park, where the lone repair station remains.
“I had forgotten a tool and we tore the car apat, tore all our bags apart. I had just forgotten it, and then remembered there was a bike-repair stand right there. So after using the repair stand, and it was such a great experience, it was so disappointing to hear that someone would bother stealing them.”
The stations are bolted down and, according to Ron Comeau, a city worker who helped install them, difficult to remove.
“You pretty much have to use a grinder of some sort,” says Comeau. “There are special security-type bolts, which are hard to grasp with vice grips. It would be a lot of work to get anything in there.”
The city is hopeful tips will lead to recovery of the two missing stations, but is committed to replace them if they don’t show up.
“We’re hopeful they may turn up and we can just repair them and put them back in place, but I think our intent will be to try to replace them,” says Cheetham. “It seems they were well received, and in doing so we may look at having to beef up security a little more, whether it’s by location or by design.”
