[vkou]

He's not just getting some rope - he's untangling the rope that bundled these bicycles, when they were lowered into place. The rope was attached to a crane. You can see that crane in the picture - he's actively working on the storage site.

Yes, I imagine that may damage some of the bicycles. It's still much cheaper then alternative means of storage. It's just the cost of dealing with industrial quantities of goods - your local big box stores lose or damage some of their merchandise all the time, for similar reasons.

[watmough]

I think that's actually literal fire-hose, rather than rope. It's pretty handy for delimiting R/C car tracks!