Bike Registration This Saturday Morning For 17th District Residents

A 17th Police District bike registration event is happening tomorrow morning from 10:00 am - noon. Residents of the 17th Police District can register their bikes with the police at Bicycle Therapy at 2211 South Street.

The 17th District, with a red star hovering mysteriously but conveniently over the location of Bicycle Therapy

From their e-mail:

Get a new bike for the holidays? Want to register it with the 17th Police District as part of the Bicycle Registration system? Come to Bicycle Therapy (2211 South Street) on Saturday, January 11th from 10 am to 12 pm to register your bike! Officers from the 17th Police District will be on-hand, as will members of the SOSNA Safety Committee to help you through the process.

Bike registration is helpful should your bike be stolen and recovered by the police. Other good preemptive steps to take include taking photographs of you with your bike, and recording its serial number.

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.

South of South Neighborhood Association Partnering With Police On Bike Registry Program

The South of South Neighborhood Association is partnering with the 17th Police District on a pilot bike registry program. Right now it's only for people living in the 17th District but the SOSNA website claims it could be expanded if found successful.

The process is pretty simple:

1. Bicycle owners fill out an online form and receive a confirmation e-mail from the police.
2. Within 2 weeks of receiving that e-mail, bring the bike to the police station at 17th & Federal.
3. Police will etch a serial number onto the bike.

Should your bike get stolen, that number will allow you to claim it should it be recovered, and help prove the bicycle was stolen should it be found on Craigslist or in a shop.

No bike theft prevention system is perfect, but registry certainly helps the sometimes-arduous task of proving ownership. We're glad to see the police taking bike theft seriously by partnering with a neighborhood association, in this case one representing a heavily-bicycled portion of the city.

Video Of Recently Recovered Stolen Bikes

The Philadelphia Police Department has uploaded this video of some of the stolen bikes they recently recovered. If you see your bike, or can help return one to its rightful owner, call the Major Crimes unit at 215-686-3396. (original link to the video)

Protect Your Bike For $15

QR codes, the 21st Century equivalent of junk mail and alleged precursor to dystopia, have finally found a use for the greater good - tracking and finding stolen bikes.

Kryptonite and BikeShepherd.org have joined forces to make local police bike registration programs obsolete. For around $15 you can purchase these tamper-proof stickers with a unique PULSE ID number. Your bike is linked to that number through registration at BikeShepherd.org. If your bike is stolen, list it as such to the website.

Meanwhile, savvy smartphone users who see a suspicious bike tagged with a PULSE ID tag can use their phone to scan the code. The webpage will tell them if that bike is reported stolen. If it is, they click the CONTACT US button and provide the location details. Alerts will go out to the police, local clubs, shops and an army of self proclaimed Bike Detectives.

A glance at the stolen bike map shows only a couple of outstanding bike thefts in the City of Philadelphia, a fraction of the estimated 4,000 to 10,000 bikes stolen in the City annually. Imagine if 10% of the bikes out there were tied into this system - that could have a big deterrent effect and greatly increase chances for recovery.

Ideally the bicycle industry and Federal Government would create a VIN system to track bicycles like motor vehicles. Perhaps Pulse ID will jumpstart progress towards a national bicycle tracking system.

A list of online locations and stores that sell PULSE ID is located here. Kryptonite claims that PULSE ID is available at select dealers. Locally it only lists REI has having them available in store, but check with your local bike shops to see if they have them in stock.

In the meantime you can help us combat bicycle theft by voting for the release of Reported Bike Thefts in the Open Data Race.

Northern Liberties Bike Theft Video

We warn about locking your bike to signs on page 7 in our Safe Bicycling in Philadelphia guide. Still witnessing someone who has the cullions to get up on a ladder to remove a sign in broad daylight on the 800 Block of N 3rd St. is a bit unnerving. It shows that if you walk instead of run, you can get away with just about anything in Philadelphia.

Help your fellow cyclists out, if you see someone who appears to be stealing a bike dial 911. Complacency is the only reason that this loser could get away with it. And as for the lowlife that provided some needed assistance, we hope you get caught too.



Thanks to all who gave us the heads up on this video.