Massive pile of rental bikes seen at Dallas recycling center

Some of the yellow rental bikes that used to be on the streets and sidewalks of Dallas are now filling a recycling center.

A photo of a massive a pile of Ofo bikes at CMC Recycling in Dallas went viral over the weekend.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings tweeted a one-word reaction: “Terrible.”  He later added that the pile of mangled and mashed up bikes seemed terribly wasteful.

An Ofo spokesman said some of the bikes in “good condition” will go to Tarrant County-based Bikes for Tykes and 250 others will go to Dallas’ City Square, which serves the chronically homeless.

City Square’s executive director said their organization is not getting into the bike share business.

“We’ll just begin to slowly and methodically place the bikes in the hands of the people who want them. We are not going to have a mass distribution of bikes,” said City Square’s Larry James. “We are not going to dump the bikes back on the city. We are going to take our time and put them in the hands of the people who can use them.”

James said his group does not plan on repainting the bikes. But he does think they can be useful for people trying to get their lives back together.

“Getting to work or getting to the bus stop, it may mean saving two hours a day to have a bike, we’ll see,” James said.

Ofo ceased operations in Dallas last month after the city passed new regulations that required companies to have a permit and pay a per-bike fee.

At one point there were nearly 5,000 of the Ofo bikes in the city and a total of nearly 20,000 bikeshare bikes. Three of the five companies have now left the Dallas market and there are only about 3,500 rental bikes from two companies currently on the streets.

FOX 4 News is a FOX-owned station serving Dallas-Fort Worth and all of North Texas.