APB to the Web: Find My Bike!

AUGUST 26, 2009

APB to the Web: Find My Bike!

By ANJALI ATHAVALEY
WSJ

When Heather McKibbon's bike was stolen in May, she didn't just get angry. She decided to get it back. The 29-year-old project manager at a Toronto consulting firm alerted people to the theft through the social-networking site Facebook. Just hours later, a friend replied with a link to a bike for sale that looked like her own $1,300 Cannondale touring bike on eBay's Kijiji, an online classified-ads site. Ms. McKibbon recognized her bike and, posing as an interested buyer, arranged to meet the seller at a local subway station. She brought the police along as well, resulting in a small-scale sting operation. Police arrested the man and returned the Cannondale to Ms. McKibbon, who claimed it with photos of herself on the bike, as well as its serial number. "It was a little overwhelming to realize that nobody in Toronto gets their stolen bike back, and here I was about to get my stolen bike back," she says.

Ms. McKibbon is one of a growing number of bike-theft victims who are using bike blogs and social-media sites such as Twitter to take matters into their own hands. These grassroots efforts come as bike theft rises in cities and college campuses around the U.S. San Diego saw a 45% increase in reported bike thefts in the first half of this year from a year earlier. The police station covering the central part of downtown Los Angeles has seen a 72% increase in stolen-bike reports so far this year, the city's police department says. Austin and Philadelphia have seen increases for the past two years. The incidence of theft is likely even higher, cycling advocates say, because many victims don't bother reporting bike thefts.

The reasons for the theft boom are complex, including population growth in some locales, but generally, more people are biking these days—and they are riding pricier bicycles. Also, the economic downturn is contributing to the increase. "Harder times mean more thefts," says Bryan Hance, founder of StolenBicycleRegistry.com, where people can list their stolen bikes free. Last month, the site received 335 listings, about twice as many as a year ago. "Bikes are a lot more expensive than they were five or 10 years ago," he adds. "The fact that they are worth more makes them more of a target." Jonathan Maus, publisher of BikePortland.org, an Oregon blog that relaunched its stolen-bikes listings in June, notes that "a lot of the growth in biking is coming from new people. They may not understand how important it is to use a real lock."

Some cities are taking action in an effort to be more bike-friendly. In Austin, city officials are planning to curb theft through a new bicycle registry and an education campaign on how to correctly lock a bike. Last month, Boston launched StolenBikesBoston.com, where people can register their bikes and send out theft alerts on Twitter and Facebook. So far, about 240 people follow the alerts on Twitter and 350 on Facebook. Boston police don't track bike-theft numbers, but "we wanted to head off the theft issue because as ridership increases, theft increases," says Nicole Freedman, director of the city's bicycle program. Cities are also trying to provide safer bike storage. New York's city council passed a law last month requiring commercial landlords to allow the employees of building tenants to bring their bikes into their buildings—potentially making it easier for cyclists to store their bikes at work. Advocates of the law say that fear of theft is the No. 1 reason people don't ride their bikes to work. Some city employers, like Google Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG, already allow employees to store their bikes at work.

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Cyclists who manage to locate their bikes online or on the streets should avoid confronting thieves themselves and should get local law enforcement involved, police say. "We can certainly set up a sting," says Lt. Paul Vernon, head of detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department's central division. He notes that law-enforcement officials are seeing more "Frankenstein bikes," or those constructed from stolen parts, on the streets. "The trouble for many people is proving that is their bike." He recommends that cyclists record the serial numbers of their bikes or even etch their names into them for identification purposes.

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I hope he has the serial # of his bikes that he uses but I think he is rarely off them! Good idea though.

I long board instead so I can carry it with me at all times.