Happily, I also believe that Bernard Klevickas, an artist in Long Island City, Queens, has already solved it.

Historically, we have always had a problem with disposing of our used and obsolete transportation apparatus. There were those dead horses, a vexing issue up until the early part of the last century. (The aforementioned article says a streetcar horse had an average life expectancy of four years.) There are today’s automobiles — all those cheery call-us-for-car-disposal services make it seem as if clunkers just vanish into a blissful, tax-deductible afterlife, but you don’t have to drive far into the suburbs to come across choked junkyards or rusting truck carcasses next to run-down houses. And am I the only one who is suspicious of the finding that old subway cars, when tossed into the ocean, make good artificial reefs? If ocean life wanted to live in subway cars, you’d see more fish and fewer rats in the A train tunnel.

Already, the bicycle age is experiencing a disposal problem, though still a relatively minor one. You see deceased bikes — or, more often, pieces of bikes — all over the city, chained to poles or tossed in alleys. Maybe a perfectly good but inexpensive bike was parked by its owner and had its wheels stolen; rather than replace them, the owner just left the frame where it was. Maybe a bike gave up the ghost after long and honorable service, but its owner couldn’t cram it into the trash can or figure out whether or how it fit into the city’s indecipherable recycling rules.

Where you or I might see an eyesore in these discarded bikes, Mr. Klevickas, who works mostly in metal sculpture, sees opportunity. He has made some bike racks out of bicycle parts he has found around town, and more recently he has been displaying a spunky, funky bicycle planter on lampposts, guerrilla-style.