Estimating a Bike Theft Neighborhood Index for Philly

[Ed. note: the following is a guest blog post from Ken Steif, a Doctoral Fellow in the City & Regional Planning Department at the University of Pennsylvania]

In anticipation of this weekend's Apps for Philly 'Hackathon' which is focused on transit and transportation, I did some tinkering with a bit of data on bike thefts throughout the City.

We know that there are a variety of locational factors that influence a thief's decision to steal a bike. Many of these probably have something to do with the built environment, like lighting or proximity to a bar or restaurant where a patron might witness the crime. There is also likely a temporal component involved as well - perhaps more bikes are stolen in the warmer months.

Given these patterns, I thought it might be possible to capture some interesting dynamics by estimating a Bike Theft Neighborhood Index. The index effectively plots thefts over a time/space continuum, illustrating how the monthly pattern of incidents vary across neighborhoods.

Click for bigger version

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We (the Bicycle Coalition) collaborated with local map and data whizzes Azavea this year on bike theft as part of Azavea's Summer of Maps program. We will have a more detailed report on the results of that collaboration later this fall. In the meantime, remember to deter theft by securing both wheels and your frame to a pole or rack that cannot itself be cut or pulled from the ground.