Regularly, more than 2 million bikes are stolen each year in North America—meaning every 30 seconds, someone’s ride was going missing. And the problem has only been growing during the coronavirus pandemic, when more people have turned to bicycles as their main mode of transportation.
According to CBS News, riders in New York have filed more than 4,000 stolen bike complaints to the New York City Police Department—a 28 percent jump from a year before. That's up nearly 28%, from 3,507 complaints over the same period a year earlier, according to the New York City Police Department. In other major cities like Denver, bike theft was up 23 percent year-over-year from January through September.
According to the research compiled by the world’s biggest bike registry, Project 529 Garage, bike theft across North America is a billion-dollar problem. Of the millions of bicycles stolen every year, police typically only recover several hundred thousand.
J Allard, the founder of Project 529, told Bicycling last year that those are pretty conservative estimates, too. They arrived at those figures after working with countless cities and police departments, a survey they put together, and by extrapolating FBI data.
In all, the best bet for recovering a stolen bike is by using the bike’s serial number. If the owner knows the serial number and can share it with police, along with make, model, and images, police can then prove ownership.
So it’s not necessarily the fault of police departments, as Allard said many assume. Instead, it’s hard to reunite bikes with their proper owners largely because people don’t know their serial number, don’t register their bike, and don’t report the theft to police.
In fact, according to the organization’s data, only one in five bikes are ever reported as stolen, less than 20 percent of bike owners even know their bike’s serial number, and only 1 percent of bike owners ever register their bikes with some kind of registry, like 529 Garage.
With these bleak statistics, it’s no wonder that only 5 percent of owners get their stolen bike back.
Allard is aiming to have five million bikes registered in 529 Garage by 2022. Currently, they have over a million.
The whole idea for the company came from Allard’s own run-in with a bike thief. He thought his downhill bike would be safe securely locked—three times over—to his truck that was parked in a Seattle parking garage with security guards, cameras, and key fob entry.
4 Bike Locks to Keep Your Ride Safe
Crazy Light
Rocky Mounts Carlito
Super portable and weighs less than a pound.
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Bomb Proof
Kryptonite Fahgettaboutit
The strongest small option available.
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Be Seen
Hiplok Superbright
A strong, reflective lock that you can wear around your waist.
$130 | REI
Great Deal
Kryptonite KryptoLok
A solid lock for most riders, at an affordable price.
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Allard reported his stolen bike to police, and that was when he learned that he should’ve known its serial number. He spread word through the bike community and friends on social media, and 30 days later someone reported that they saw the bike on eBay, just seven minutes after it had been listed for sale
Thanks to his own sleuthing as well, the Seattle Police Department, and his bike sponsor Santa Cruz—who helped him figure out the serial number on the bike’s fork—Allard was eventually reunited with his bike.
In the end, he said the entire process was exhausting and more than what most people would be willing to do to recover their bike. There just simply wasn’t a good system in place.
That’s why Allard decided to start Project 529, to give bike owners, police departments, bike shops, and others a single, comprehensive tool to store critical information like serial numbers and to report stolen bikes.
Bike owners can use the app or go to the website to register their bike, which on average takes less than six minutes. If it’s ever stolen, they can report it using the 529 Garage registry to alert other registry users in a 10-mile radius.
Bike owners will still have to report stolen bikes to the police, but the police will have the information they need through the registry. This is especially helpful for police, since most bike theft cases are cross-jurisdictional—meaning that multiple departments may find themselves having to work together to solve the case.
The more people that register their bikes, the better the system will work. A little bit of proactive work now could make all the difference for those who fall victim to bike theft in the future.
“Criminals are the number one enemy, but the number two enemy is apathy,” Allard said.
Project 529 has already proven its merit in Vancouver, which Allard referred to as Canada’s bike-theft capital. Since launching their campaign in 2015, which collected over 100,000 bike registrations, bike theft in Vancouver has gone down 30 percent.
“I’m the humble tool maker,” he said. “The real power of the system comes from people coming together.”
Easy Ways to Store Your Bike Inside
Designed for a variety of different bikes, this system uses minimal tools and requires little set up to get your bikes organized.
Two rubber ends anchor the pole to the floor and ceiling, with no wall-drilling necessary—just make sure you have the pole snug and stable before mounting your bikes on the hooks.
For the ultimate floor—and wall—space saver, hang your bike up. Two plates are mounted to the ceiling, each with drop-down hooks that attach to the saddle and handlebars; then the bike is hoisted up with thick ropes.
Saris Ceiling-Mounted Bike Rack
The four separate racks can glide along the mount, giving you the option to tuck your bikes against the wall or space them out for easy access.
When she’s not out riding her mountain bike, Jessica is an editor for Popular Mechanics. She was previously an editor for Bicycling magazine.
