March 18, 2015
With spring finally within our reach we’ll soon see a lot more two-wheel travelers peddling throughout the city, and with it, an increase in bicycle thefts.
Philly is one of the top ranked bike-friendly cities in the country, getting even better for bike riders with a citywide bike share program on the horizon. But with the good, comes some bad: a ranking as one of the worst cities for bike thefts.
Philadelphia Magazine wrote a feature on the the city's bike theft problem in 2014, and got ahold of the Philadelphia Police Department's bike theft incident reports from 2011 to 2013, the most recent statistics available at the time of publication, which indicated an annual increase in incidences with 2,122 bike thefts in 2013. (That was just the thefts that were reported!)
A similar 2013 study by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia pinpointed the top spots for bikes thefts: the neighborhood of the Drexel and Penn campuses, as well as the monthly average of citywide thefts that year -- 130 to 160 -- and the annual average monetary loss of property: nearly $4 million.
But don’t stow away your bike just yet!
The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia has compiled information on how to lock up your bike correctly.
And if you do find yourself as the unfortunate victim of a bicycle bandit, there are steps to help nab the bad guy and get it back, including taking the proactive approach of registering your bike on the city police districts' bike registry so police have something to work with if you find yourself in this situation.
Click here and do it right now!
There's also a community policing-type Facebook page, Philadelphia Stolen Bikes, where members can post photos of their missing beloved adventure companions and help others find theirs.
In the near future there may be an even better way to prevent bike theft with a GPS tracking peddle system start-up preparing to launch in France, which tracks your stolen bicycle via a phone app -- think Find My Phone, but for bikes.
