About once a day someone leaves a bicycle on a bus, SkyTrain or SeaBus. They get off at their stops, and their feet pound the pavement instead of the pedals.[/p] People regularly get off at their stops while their wallets head for the next station.[/p] Transit riders leave behind car and house keys, fishing rods, live insects, cellphones, car parts, stereos, musical instruments, boat oars, teddy bears, baseball bats, pills -- even artificial limbs.
[/p] The found items are collected at the end of each day and taken to TransLink's lost property office, tucked away at the Stadium SkyTrain station.[/p] This small storehouse of forgotten treasures is quiet on a weekday when The Vancouver Sun visits, but there is a steady background buzz of activity. Employees review items, log them in the computer and sort them by category. Madonna is on the radio singing her 1980s hit Like a Prayer, accompanied by the click-click on fingers on a keyboard.[/p] Storage shelves are lined with handwritten labels, identifying, among others, the toy section, the umbrella wall, and the comically honest "oddball." Each item is tagged to according to bus route and date found.[/p] On the oddball shelf are a few hard hats, an antique Egyptian-style plate, plastic containers that didn't make it home, and an orthopedic seat cushion.[/p] An entire wall is covered with row after row of umbrellas. These portable rain shelters are the No. 1 item people in Vancouver leave behind.[/p] Last year, TransLink's lost and found department received 5,953 of them. It also took in 3,232 wallets -- that's just under nine a day -- 2,510 cellphones and 2,164 hats.[/p] Four hundred and forty bicycles were turned in, for an average of 1.2 per day.[/p] Only about a quarter of these items are ever collected by their owners, said Juliana Bailey, manager for Coast Mountain Bus Co.'s customer service department.
[/p] Full Story:
[a href="vny!://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=160cd39a-d959-4b0d-bc20-23c66ca2bbcc&p=1"]vny!://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=160cd39a-d959-4b0d-bc20-23c66ca2bbcc&p=1[/a]
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