I had a locked ebike stolen from outside my home (locked to the wall, with a gold chain lock). No problem - it had a GPS tracker fitted, and I could see it was travelling up the motorway to Birmingham; so I called the cops.
"It's out of our area".
So I waited till it stopped, in the West Midlands Police area. I called them and gave them the address where it had stopped.
"We are not going to start ringing people's doorbells to ask them if they have a stolen bike on the premises, and we can't search".
"You mean, you aren't prepared to enforce the law against theft?"
"Do you know how many Porsches and Ferarris get stolen in the WMP area every day? Bikes are not our priority."
My next e-bike (Gocycle GX) was not fitted with a £250 GPS tracker; and I keep it indoors.
In the cases I know of, people had to go vigilante and go out themselves with a bolt cutter. One of them even saw his bike listed for sale a few hours after it was stolen, and went out and stole it back. Of course not everyone has the constitution or inclination to go crime fighting.
I imagine in NYC that would have been the only way to go
From my experience, the absolute best thing is "out of sight, out of mind", so park your e-bike in a dedicated parking garage at work, or in a locked shed or inside your home, if at all possible. I live in an area with loads of bike thefts, and luckily this has saved me so far. I would almost go so far to say that I wouldn't use my e-bike unless I knew in advance that I could lock it up somewhere off the street.
https://ampedcycling.com/where-should-i-park-my-electric-bik...
The lock can be picked. And a battery powered angle grinder can cut through the chain. But both will take a much longer time than any u-lock. Meaning your average thief, who’s looking to work as quickly as possible, will move on to a different target.
[1] https://www.axasecurity.com/bike-security/en-gb/products/Loc...
They look relatively easy to remove with a few tools in workshop. Perhaps you can simply lock pick them, with some practice.
But they do protect against casual thieves, the ones who just grab a bike for fun, or they are drunk and need to get home, or something like that.
I've had a ring lock on my bike for decades. But then the last couple of decades the bike hasn't been in a state where the pro thieves could get any money from it. :)
And actually, I think this is the best protection: Work on reducing production cost of bikes. Most of them seem ridiculously expensive for the material that goes into them.
The type of locks you'll typically find on bikes can be cut by $30 bolt cutters in about 5 seconds, which fit in a backpack, makes barely any sound, and you can bike away after. There's virtually no defence at night, police has to accidentally catch you in the act. If someone sees you, small chance they'll try to stop you over someone else's bike, especially at night when you're armed with a bolt cutter, and when they have no way to verify your story that 'it's my bike but I lost my keys'. If they call the cops they won't come, and if they do, will definitely not be in-time. And if they are, its a petty crime without real consequence, and the person will probably continue afterwards for quite some time.
Bike theft really is just quite shitty. The best you can do is make your bike less of an interesting target. There's typically lots of bikes around, if yours isn't the most expensive model and has two locks whereas other bikes have 1 lock, your bike is likely not going to be the one the thief picks.
And if you don't lock it to a fixed object, indeed it'll be susceptible to the bike gangs that just throw 20 locked bikes into a van at night and take the time unlocking them later.
Yes, some of my wilder fantasies include a large sprung spike in the downtube that could be released remotely when you discover the bike has been stolen.
Thieves generally carry either an angle-grinder or a bolt-cutter, but not both. Angle-grinders work on D-locks, but not on chains. Bolt-cutters work on chains, but not D-locks. If you use one of each, the chances are the thief will steal someone else's bike instead.
Over a quarter century of bicycle commuting I've had 7 bikes stolen, and it cost me about $20k less than if I had been relying on public transport, the next cheapest option.
The article does make a brief callout to 'anti-theft', and yeah, can confirm that this is important, but not sure what the best approach is. Maybe some huge honking alarm, like for cars. Expensive cargo bikes even have GPS tracking on some of them now. Simply locking the bike is unfortunately not enough.