Cyclists urge Winnipeg to shift gears toward better bike registry
National bicycle registration systems are working in other Canadian cities. Could they work in Winnipeg?
It’s been four years since Winnipeg launched its online bike registry, a database intended to help return missing bikes to their owners, but some cyclists want a better solution to increasing bike recovery in the city.
In a public survey released in April by cycling advocate group Bike Winnipeg, three per cent of the some 300 respondents felt the registry has been helpful in recovering lost bikes, even though nearly half of them use the registry.
“Obviously, there’s not a lot of confidence out there in the city’s bike registry,” said Mark Cohoe, the group’s executive director.
The city started the online registry back in 2018. To register a bike, cyclists must pay $7.14 and enter their bike’s information, including its make, model, and serial number. If police find a stolen bike that is registered, they can look it up in the registry and try to reconnect it with its owner.
About 17,000 bikes are currently recorded in the city’s system, according to Adam Campbell, a city spokesperson. More than 1,500 bikes were reported stolen in 2021, according to the Winnipeg Police Service. The city recovered 384 bikes and returned 26 registered bikes to their owners.
Cohoe said he understands people’s lack of faith in the registry. “I think people don’t see a very proactive enforcement,” said Cohoe.
Bikes that are being recovered aren’t necessarily due to police going after bike thieves, but rather the police simply recovering what they find on the streets, Cohoe added.
As part of its survey, Bike Winnipeg asked respondents some open-ended questions about how the city can reduce bike theft and improve bike recovery. Many respondents expressed a need for a national, cost-free registry that works together with an identification sticker that cyclists can place on their bike.
National bike registries more effective: advocate, bike store owner
Project 529, a global bike registration system based in Seattle, checks all those boxes.
“We’ve got the blueprint,” said Rob Brunt, chief outreach officer at Project 529, in an interview on Saturday, Sept. 17.
That blueprint is a free mobile app, called 529 Garage. By registering their bike on the app, cyclists can alert app users, including police, bike store owners, and other cyclists, that their bike has been stolen.
“Instead of just two officers looking for your bicycle, you got the whole cycling community looking for it,” said Brunt.
Users can also search the registry to check if the bike they are about to buy has been stolen. They can search for the bike’s make, model, serial number, colour, or seven-character code on the Project 529 tamper-proof identification sticker, which are sold at participating bike stores.
“Project 529 is intuitive,” said Brunt. “It’s like a Google search.”
This is unlike the city’s registry, which only the police and the city’s bike recovery officer can access.
Philip Roadley, owner of Bikes & Beyond on Henderson Highway, said national registries like Project 529 work better than local ones. “Being national is just more effective because sometimes [stolen] bikes migrate out of the province,” he said.
Cyclist Darren Bernhardt is one of the few Winnipeggers who has seen success with the city’s registry. Two bikes were stolen from Bernhardt’s garage last July, one of which was registered in the city’s database. About three to four weeks later, Bernhardt said police recovered the registered bike at a pawn shop and returned it to him soon after. “It was great,” he said. “It worked for me.”
However, Bernhardt said he would still use a national registry if there was one available in Winnipeg, since stolen bikes don’t always stay in the city. “I would definitely be jumping onto that because the bikes I highly doubt just stick around here,” Bernhardt said.
For Cohoe, this is why worldwide searchability is one of the main benefits of registries like Project 529. “If my bike is stolen in Winnipeg, but someone’s trying to sell it in, say, Calgary or Vancouver, somebody in Calgary or Vancouver can also look it up and find out that it’s been reported stolen,” he said.
Cohoe said implementing a national registry in Winnipeg would be quite viable because of this. “I’ve never really heard of a bike recovery in Calgary returned via the City of Winnipeg bike registry,” Cohoe added.
Brunt agrees. He said if a bike is stolen in Winnipeg, bike thieves will sell the bike in another city to avoid getting caught. “All I know as a thief is that I don’t want to sell that bike in Winnipeg,” Brunt said.
Partnering with cities, police services could see bike theft drop by 30 per cent in one year: Project 529 chief outreach officer
Project 529 also sells licenses to its software to cities and police services across the country. With the license, cities can access more information than a regular Project 529 user can, such as data on the number of bikes registered, recovered, or stolen in their city. Police services that pay for the license also have access to a separate app, called 529 Garage for Police, Brunt said.
These partnerships are more effective in reducing thefts, he added. “We’re way more engaged when we get all the partners in the room.”
The partnership would cost Winnipeg about $11,000 each year, according to Project 529’s website, which can estimate a city’s annual subscription fee based on its population size. For Brunt, this is a small price to pay, given how successful the program has been.
Prior to partnering with Project 529, Vancouver was recovering about 3,000 stolen bikes a year, and only about one per cent were being returned to owners, according to Brunt, who is also a retired Vancouver police officer.
“I felt like we’re kind of carrying the ball to the one-yard line and then we fumbled,” he said.
After launching Project 529 in Vancouver in 2015, he said bike theft in the city has been reduced by 42 per cent.
There are other registries that have seen success similar to Project 529, such as
Bike Index, which also partners with cities and police services. In 2020, Calgary Police Service returned 21.5 per cent of bikes reported stolen in the city with the help of Bike Index. This is significantly higher than Winnipeg’s return rate, which sits at just over one per cent.
For Brunt, partnering with Project 529 is a no-brainer for Winnipeg. “I can’t see there not being a 30 per cent reduction in a year as long as you get all the partners on board,” he said.
Reducing bike theft among some mayoral candidate promises
With Winnipeg’s municipal election on Oct. 26 drawing near, some candidates have pledged to implement national bike registries if elected. Rick Shone plans to partner with Project 529, while Shaun Loney is considering replacing the city’s registry with Bike Index or Project 529.
Kevin Klein, another candidate for mayor, plans to both establish policy to deter bike theft and invest in secure bike parking. The other candidates, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Rana Bokhari, Jenny Motkaluk, Don Woodstock, Glen Murray, Scott Gillingham, Idris Adelakun, and Chris Clacio, have not announced any plans to reduce bike theft in Winnipeg.