When you glance into a waterway, you probably expect aquatic life and the occasional piece of trash. But the reality in many urban metropolises is that lurking beneath the surface of any waterway could be an astounding number of… bicycles.
It’s a strange social phenomenon that has forced bike sharing companies to fish out thousands of their rental bikes from rivers in Southern China; and a rental company simply stopped business in Rome because too many of its bicycles were thrown into the Tiber.
In Amsterdam, 15,000 bikes are pulled from canals each year — a number that has actually improved over past years.
