> Can we enforce harsher punishment for bike thieves?

Yes, you can, but you choose not to [1]. This is a drain on society beyond the mere cost of buying replacement bikes. Bike theft discourages (even prevents) people from riding bikes. It puts us back in our cars, and makes us more sedentary. People who have never even ridden a bike before and have $200 to buy one are discouraged from buying used bikes because of the risk of buying stolen property.

The net effect--the true cost--of doing nothing serious about bicycle theft is massive, and it is borne by everyone through higher health insurance premiums, if not directly through decreased personal well-being.

Bike theft ought to be dealt with just as harshly as breaking into a gym and stealing a stationary bike...perhaps as harshly as stealing a car. Its effects are just as deleterious.

[1] I say "you" as a US person living outside the US, in a place where good bicycles are routinely left unattended with cheap cable locks, and not stolen. Still, parts like lights and pumps do get stolen, and even this does discourage people from cycling.

I'm surprised that "stronger locks" is what folks resort to, instead of trying to address the underlying issue (be it through punishment or other means.) I live in a country (in Asia) where bikes are routinely left on the street and not stolen or burglarized, scooters are abound and also easily parked, and generally petty crimes are rare. Here I can also freely leave my phone on the table in a coffee shop and go about.

I sure as heck wouldn't do this back in SF, though -- the amount of petty crime the society is willing to put up with, is, again, surprising.

It seems like if there are people willing to pay for expensive locks, if there was some sort of secure enclosure installed in various parts of the city that could be rented out just like parking lots - this would help more than locks.

They use this in towns around Barcelona: https://www.bicibox.cat/default.aspx

Yes perfect, these structures should be in every major city!

although, it seems like the design needs improving & strengthening [1]

[1] http://www.lavanguardia.mobi/slowdevice/local/20120802/54332...

I agree. I also suspect we live near each other; you can contact me with this name using the Google stuff and maybe we can leave our smartphones on the table together sometime.

Bikes are stolen all the time in Beijing. I got a pair of rollerblades because of that.

I think bait bikes are a good solution. Put out a few normal looking bikes with gps trackers in them, and have stiff fines for those who get caught. Making locks safe against an angle grinder isnt really feasible, but making someone think twice before even trying because it's a bait bike might work.

I used to wonder why people would often use a natural gas main as a locking point. Now I realize that it provides a decent defence against angle grinder attacks (or at least gets any thief some public safety or trumped-up terrorism charge).

Interestingly enough, intentionally setting a trap (even on your own property that you expect to be burglarized) has been ruled to be unlawful unless your life is in danger.

"The law has always placed a higher value upon human safety than upon mere rights in property."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney

Intent would be difficult to prove, versus "Its a convenient tied down point."

Only three problems with that:

Firstly, bait bikes are inevitably going to be cheap bikes. Thieves are more interested in expensive bikes - and if the expensive bikes are not only more profitable, but also safer to steal, then they're bound to step up their lock-picking and angle-grinding game.

Secondly, finding someone to organise this would be difficult. Any single organisation sufficiently large enough to do this would be bureaucratic enough to insist on the same make/model of bike (for the obvious homogeneity benefits), which would make them as obvious as an undercover Crown Vic. Conversely, any kind of grassroots or community effort would (by design) need to alert as many people as possible to the venture, including the bike thieves themselves - thus spoiling it before it even begins.

Finally, these things are chop-shopped almost the instant they get on-sold. Tearing a bike down can be done in a public park in 5 minutes flat with a pocket's worth of tools. The bike thieves can adapt a lot more easily than the sting operators.

You make a couple of assumtions that are just weird.

There's no reason to assume tha bait bikes are going to be cheap bikes, nor that all bait bikes would be the same make and model.

Bait bikes of a make/model make sense in a sufficiently bureaucratic organisation because it makes purchasing, tooling and technician training a hell of lot easier. Police cars (Crown Victorias) are obvious for the benefit of a few chases/crashes, when police fleets could have been a bit more surreptitious. I don't see a large organisations doing any different in selecting a "perfect bike to steal".

I assumed cheap bikes because of Ainmats[1] ratio of 1 in 100 bikes being trap bikes. 1 in 100 in any reasonably-sized city means tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars of kit (including GPS), and anyone with that kind of scratch has someone trying to minimise expenditure. Or, why spring for a Trek Butterfly to catch a hungry junkie when a Huffy would net hundreds of the same?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818498

You make it sound like bike thieves knowing about the bait bikes would be a bad thing, when in fact that's the point. You want thieves to know about it, and be scared that any bike they make try to steal is a bait bike. They definitely couldn't be the same model, but I don't think that's as difficult as you make it sound. Isn't there a pretty successful program in San francisco starting out?

Bait-cars work fine.

> Routinely opened with a Bic pen jammed into the keyhole (from the article).

This one model of locks. That was fixed in 2004. The whole first paragraph is fluff. The author does not know how bikes are actually stolen. I had a nice bike and lived in NYC. I used the New York Fahgettaboudit Mini [1] and a small cheap chain for the front wheel. The Fahgettaboudit has anti-theft protection up to $4,500 in US. If you are going to leave your bike in public overnight you always risk having your bike stolen. The key is to have a good lock and don't have a bunch of expensive accessories that can be easily taken.

1 http://www.kryptonitelock.com/content/kryt-us/en/products/pr...

Honest question: Do you know anyone who has successfully redeemed the Kryptonite anti-theft protection?

No, but I never knew anyone who had their bike stolen using a Kryptonite New Yorker lock.

Do you know anyone who has unsuccessfully done so?

Whether you consider a partial payout successful is up to you:

http://www.cyclechat.net/threads/claiming-monies-from-krypto...

Register your bike. https://bikeindex.org

We've successfully recovered thousands of bikes (three in the past two days!). We've made it easy to id stolen bikes, and more difficult to sell stolen bikes - which makes ultimately bike theft less appealing.

GPS trackers are great - but unfortunately, they have yet to meet these vital requirements: easy to charge, difficult to remove, waterproof, cheap enough to put on everyone's bikes.

Ride bikes that aren't worth stealing. When I used to bike to the train station in suburban chicago, I used an old single-speed no-name coaster-brake bike bought at a garage sale for almost nothing. I locked it with a very simple cable and padlock and nobody ever bothered it.

This may be true in the US but definitely not in Europe. I guess here they get hauled off to Poland where there's still some value in them.

That's just plain stupid and tad racist. You'd be extremely surprised to learn that these are sold for £10 or £20 not far from when they've been stolen.

Can you explain the racism part to me as I fail to see it. It's racist to say that bike prices are higher in Poland?

It is racist to imply bikes are stolen by Poles and probably also to say that a shitty bike not worth selling round the corner for £20 is worth hauling all the way to Poland.

There was no implication that Poles were doing the stealing.

No, of course. That's why he had to specify a country. :-)

Sometimes we're being racist even though it's not on purpose. Unfortunately we're all racist up to some extent; myself included.

// Unrelated fun fact after checking your profile (I was trying to get some context for the discussion): If I'm not mistaken you're a Brit living and working in Barcelona. I'm from Barcelona, but living and working in Britain :-D

I'm tempted to do something like that. One thing you should be wary of is not leaving anything that can be taken off easily. If they don't take the bike, they might steal your lights or something small instead. Make sure that easily removable items are not left on the bike.

Long term, I think it's infrastructure changes and a more engrained bike culture that allows people to bring their bike inside with them more often. (Of course, maybe we just bring the thieves indoors then, but I bet the reduction in ease and opportunity corresponds with a reduction in theft.)

I ride two bikes, one worth stealing that simply never gets locked up outside, and another that nobody would ever want nor would I miss. When I ride the former, I only ride to places that allow me to take my bike inside: Roomy coffee shops or offices with storage for bikes.

Harsh punishment seems ruled out by the stories of Charles Dickens. In a time when they'd hang or exile you for a loaf of bread, bread still got stolen. Theft is a crime resulting from the social context, and particularly from inequality.

Bit of a difference from harsh punishment not deterring theft of something you need to live vs. theft of something like a bike. When the punishments for stealing anything at all are as severe as hanging, exile, or losing a hand, do you really expect much else besides necessities to be stolen? I suppose you still might expect all sorts of things to be stolen if the chance of getting caught is nil, as it is with bikes -- you still need a strong enough probability of getting caught to back up whatever punishment is decreed, which is why bait bikes can be a helpful tool. I doubt better locks would work, I remembered this video from years ago on how even ridiculous methods of stealing a bike won't get much attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbklkFuFk-4 (And if they did, a thief can probably convince most people it's their own bike and they lost the key/combo -- I kind of suspect that possibility goes through the minds of onlookers anyway.)

Some punishment at all might be useful, though. Instead of none at all.