I mean, Kryptonite literally has a 'NYC' line of bicycle locks.

When researching getting a lock for a personal scooter NYC always comes up as ground zero for problems with theft, to the point where much of the advice is to not even lock it up but bring it inside.

Yup. that's been true for decades. Literally, I lived in Manhattan for a while in the 1980s and never even considered leaving my bicycle outside, either at home or at work locations. It was ordinary to see stripped frames still locked to a post, some just appeared, some sitting for many weeks. Crime has risen and fallen significantly since I left, so I have no good relative comparison, other than that this is not new.

That’s not a “city” thing, it’s a “New Yorker” thing. People in Tokyo routinely leave things unattended in public, including valuable and easily carried things like laptops.

Or that’s a Tokyo thing. I can’t think of a single city in europe where you could leave a laptop unattended and expect to see it again.

I'm not sure that's true. I think people are generally more honest that people assume. It's prudent to assume it will be stolen, but I suspect most of the time, accidentally leaving something somewhere for a short while would be just fine.

Sure but in how many cities would people be comfortable leaving a laptop unattended? I don’t think many. It’s pretty unrealistic to use that as the bar for NYC

My point was that perceptions don't necessarily correlate with reality.

Its an american city thing really. The same thing would happen when I live in big cities on the west coast and in smaller cities in the midwest too. In the midwest was where my friend got a window smashed for their micro usb cable that couldn't have been more than $2.

The miswest city I live on sees lots of unlocked bikes outside the gym. I wouldn't do that in some areas, but where I live it seems safe

Drive to your nearest midwestern state university. I bet the bikes are locked outside that gym.

This is what I love about my tesla (I wonder if other makes do the same) -- when I get out and walk away, it rolls up the windows, locks the doors, and turns on security camera all automatically. I don't have to think about it. It does remove some background anxiety (did I click the lock button on my remote? did I leave the window down?)

A lot of this is simply a raw population effect. When I lived in Austin, I got in the habit of locking every door I went out of. Now that I live in rural Alabama, I frequently leave the house doors unlocked. I've forgotten to close the garage door for a day or so. My truck is frequently unlocked.

Statistically, where I live now is the same or significantly worse than Austin. But with the lower population, there are simply fewer incidents.

Haven’t locked my door in 25 years in NYC.

(I am in a doorman building.)

What building do you live in?

There are big city fixes for this. For example, most big cities offer bikeshares with docking stations all over the most popular places. So you can just use one of those bikes and not have to worry about theft.

In SF those aren't very cheap, and you also replace the anxiety of "will my bike be stolen" with "will there be any bikes left when I need one?" and "will there be any docking stations available near my destination?"

I use bike shares opportunistically, but they are not a reliable mode of transport.

CitiBikes in NYC are a bit different than in SF. Honestly, bike theft is an anecdotal thing and it’s def a problem in New York, but I definitely think it is worse in SF.

As a pure anecdote, my husband had his bike outside in Prospect Heights for 3 or 4 years literally not moved. It had a lock but he didn’t even use the bike. It got weathered and abused and after literal years, I think it was finally stolen. In Seattle, where his has been broken into multiple times in a locked garage in our luxury building, I have no doubt that an untouched bike would have lasted a few weeks at most.

But that’s all anecdotal. I can say that in the 5 years or so that I used the CitiBike system, I never had a problem either finding a bike and the pricing was also more than fair. I frequently would take a bike from near Union Square and ride across the Brooklyn Bridge home on nice afternoons. I never once had a problem getting a bike or returning it to its drop off place near my apartment.

And the app/locator lets you know the status of bikes at any time so you can know if there is a bike at a specific site or not.

This might have changed in the last few years, but if anything, the city had a hard time convincing people to use the bikes. The system is a lot more efficient than the Lime bike/scooter setup that a lot of other cities like Seattle have (people in Seattle also don’t know how to use bike lanes and use the fucking sidewalks like assholes, because Seattle).

In NY I’ve yet to see this happen. Rather it’s an issue of , is there anywhere to dock the bike. The outer boroughs are also experimenting with Electric Scooters.

This is not a fix. It's exactly the sort of extra thing I don't want to deal with when I'm cycling.

It really feels more careless to just ditch your bicycle on the side of the road and forget about it than lock it. I admit it's not a big thing, but as I tried to convey, small things like this add up.

At least in NYC, there are bike docks - you don't just leave them wherever. This was quite controversial because I think each bike dock(which supports about 20 bikes) takes up 1-2 street parking spaces, so drivers were up in arms that these bike docks would destroy street parking in NYC..

Yeah but they're somewhat less convenient, you never know the quality of the bikes or whether there will be one available, and over time it's usually far more expensive (I literally just did this calculation for myself in DC, took about 6m of daily commuting to be even and then after that you're saving money). Luckily I work in a neighborhood crawling with cops so there is very little risk when I lock my scooter outside, but I definitely don't take it to other neighborhoods and leave it outside (I've had some funny conversations checking it with the coatcheck at events after work).