Man smears excrement on saddles of NYC’s Citi Bike hire bikes

Some users of New York City’s CitiBike cycle hire scheme may wish they’d walked to work yesterday morning after CCTV footage emerged of a man smearing excrement onto the saddles of every single bike at a docking station in Manhattan’s Theater District.

The scatological scatterings at the docking station at 45th Street and 8th Avenue were discovered by the superintendent of a nearby building at 8.30am, reports the New York Daily News.

Within half an hour, he had told the scheme’s operators, NYC Bike Share, of his faecal find, but it wasn’t until 5pm that workers arrived to deal with the mess.

CCTV footage showed an unidentified man armed with a bag containing the excrement – whether it was human or something else was not reported – performing the dirty deed at 1.25am on Friday morning.

“Who could have done something like this?” said the superintendent, who wished to remain anonymous. “This is a very hot spot. Usually you don’t have bikes left at this station at all.”

He added: “Some people have taken the bikes without knowing the seats are dirty.”

An NYC Bike Share spokeswoman said the episode was an isolated incident.

Last November, a pensioner in Cambridgeshire was convicted of assault after pouring a bag of dog excrement over a cyclist she claimed had ridden too close to her on a shared use path in Trumpington.