The King County Road Services Division will remove the exercise bikes at Portage this week.

Road services director Brenda Bauer said this week that the bikes are in an area known as a “clear zone” and pose a safety hazard. According to a 2015-2016 Capital Improvement Program explanation on the county’s Road Services Division website, a “clear zone” is any area within 10 feet of a road dedicated to runaway vehicles and “may consist of a shoulder, a … slope, and/or a clear run-out area.”

Bauer said the department is reinstating an old initiative set forth to clear objects from these zones, including mailboxes and telephone poles. She said that county employees will begin taking an inventory of all objects in these zones as the first part of the process to ultimately remove them all.

“This initiative started in 2011, but was put on hold because we laid off 45 percent of our employees during the recession,” Bauer said. “We have a new, renewed initiative and effort to remove these objects.”

She went on to say that the bikes cause drivers to become distracted and either slow down or stop in the middle of the road to see them. There are also legal repercussions for the county if a crash does occur in the area, Bauer said.

“There are cases throughout the county and state where judges are saying that because objects that were involved in the crash were in the clear zone, the roads department is liable.”

There have been no documented incidents of crashes into or near the exercise bikes, but Bauer said the bikes will be easy to remove so they’re high on the priority list.

The bikes will be held “for awhile” in case another location for them is found, according to Bauer.

“I have a deep understanding of the desire for quirkiness, but safety needs to come first,” Bauer said.

The bikes are expected to be gone by Thursday.