THE thought of more than 900 people leaving £20 notes lying around on pavements across Oxford is inconceivable.

Which is why it’s hard to grasp why almost 1,000 bikes have been abandoned in the city over the last two years.

Of course we don’t know all of the reasons and some may be unavoidable, such as tragic circumstances.

But what we do know is that rusty, forgotten-about bikes are littering the city.

And they take up room on racks that could otherwise be used by thousands of others needing to lock up their much-wanted and used bicycles.

It’s good to see the city council is taking the problem seriously by regularly tagging bikes and warning owners to take them away or having them removed.

And those that can be repaired by groups such as Broken Spoke at least mean that they’re not completely wasted and left to rust away on a scrapheap.

They are, quite rightly, restored and find themselves with new owners, often those less fortunate who can’t afford to buy their own bikes.

However, those groups then need help with donations to be able to restore the bicycles and with more arriving at their doors, they have to spend more time doing what they can to put them to some use.

Let’s hope owners of all of these bikes understand the problem they are causing and realise the amount of effort, and cost, that goes into removing them.