All images courtesy of MIT Senseable City Lab.
Amsterdam is home to an estimated 850,000 bikes, which provides fertile ground for thieves to ply their trade.
But what happens to these bikes once the locks are busted apart and the cables are cut?
Dismantling bikes into parts for reselling is a common practice for crooks around the world. Another is sending them off to faraway places to minimise the chances of getting caught.
Thieves have been known to steal bikes in Germany and resell them in Ukraine, for example, and authorities have intercepted entire shipping containers packed with bikes stolen in Ireland and sent across Europe.
Scientists have now leveraged advanced tracking technology to shed new light on the issue in the Dutch capital, where around 11,000 bikes are reported stolen each year (the actual number is thought to be much higher). And the work has turned up some surprises.
“I think the most surprising thing was that it’s happening locally,” says MIT's Fabio Duarte, who undertook the work with collaborators at Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and Delft University of Technology.
The team took low-cost GPS tags designed to track electronic waste and fitted them to 100 secondhand bikes. They identified 20 hotspots for bike theft in the city, and left five bikes at each of the locations.
“We thought bikes might be stolen and sent abroad. We found they are used in the same [locations]," says Duarte. If they’re stolen and sold, the new owner uses the bike in the same areas, probably without knowing it was stolen. There are so many bikes in Amsterdam, you’re likely never going to know it was yours."
After five months, 70 of the bikes had been stolen but the GPS data revealed that most stayed a lot closer to home than expected.
For the most part, the stolen bikes continued to travel locally with 50 of the 70 frequently visiting the city centre. 68 out of the 70 remained in the local Amsterdam area.
The GPS data suggests a handful, between three and six, were sold at secondhand bike stores and 12 were taken to places known to facilitate informal sales (the black market).
Interestingly, 22 of the bikes made movements similar enough to suggest they were being trafficked as part of an organised crime network.
"Every year, the bikes of tens of thousands of Amsterdam residents are stolen,” says Melanie van der Horst, the alderman for traffic and transport, and the deputy mayor of Amsterdam “They must buy a new bike, while their bike is sold again somewhere else in the city. This research makes it clear that part of bicycle theft is organized."
The research was published in the journal PLOS One.
As in Europe, bike theft in Australia is a real and growing problem, but there are steps that can be taken to reduce the risk. We recommend that you:
- Record your bike’s serial number and details
- Make your bike identifiable, for example by engraving your name Consider using a high-quality hardened lock, such as a D-lock
- When parking, wrap your bike lock between the bike’s wheels and frame, as this will increase the bike’s protection
- If travelling to a railway station, use a secure bike cage, such as Parkiteer.
- Consider bike insurance. Bike Insure, for example, offers insurance policies for any kind of bike. You can check our site to see if there is a policy that’s right for you.
- Register your bike. There are a number of voluntary bike registers where you can record your bikes details. This helps police and the general community return your bike, should it become lost or stolen. BikeVAULT and Project529 are two examples of platforms you can use.