Have you heard? There have been a lot of bike thefts this summer.
Well, thefts of all kinds. As you enter Newport Beach on MacArthur and Jamboree you’ll see the signs blinking: lock your car, secure your valuables. I guess that’s one way to tell visitors and residents there’s an epidemic of petty theft occurring. Hmmm, I haven’t used ‘petty theft’ in a sentence in awhile, I have to look it up:
Examples of petty theft include shoplifting, bicycle theft, or stealing other “minor” items from a residence when lawfully allowed to be there (otherwise it would be burglary). Source: criminal-law-lawyer-source.com
My friend Arman Taba at Newport Cruisers, he runs the biggest bike rental fleet in all of Newport Beach; he says bikes are getting stolen. As a matter of fact, when I dropped by on Wednesday he told me of two bikes that had been stolen just the night before. He was quite cool about it, which I didn’t understand at first; see it’s his customers who rent the bike – they’re the ones getting ripped off and they have to pay for the loss in lieu of returning the bike to Arman. That’s gotta leave tourists with a bad taste…
License your bike, if you want it back that is. Crime Prevention Specialists Kathy Lowe and Andi Querry make it easy
News of these developments caused me to jump when I saw the story here about NBPD’s free bike licensing. That’s my Breezer in the photo; you can’t see the license because it’s on the bottom bar.
It only takes a minute to record your name, address and the bike serial number; that way, if the bike is ever stolen and recovered it’ll get back to you. Lemme guess, you don’t know your bike’s serial number? Well, you’re not getting it back unless you can show some proof of ownership or you get it licensed, so come to the next free licensing event Aug 24 at the Balboa pier. I like the location; why not pedal over, take the Balboa Is ferry and make a picnic out of it with the kids? – from 10am to 3pm, details here.
My wife was daydreaming… what if there were bike racks with built-in locks? That would be kinda like the Bikeshare I sampled in Boston earlier this week. I’ve seen similar systems in Montreal, Barcelona and Washington DC, but I was never convinced it would work here – now I am.
It’s a simple system: you walk up to a kiosk and swipe your credit card to get a bike. Residents can pay an annual fee and get a USB key to simply unlock a bike and go. In my test ride in Boston I had to swipe the credit card and choose 1- or 3-day rental option, $5 or $20, plus metered time. I got to ride around Boston’s Back Bay for next to nothing!
When I’m traveling I don’t want quiet, idyllic bike paths – I want to play in traffic to see how Boston drivers treat cyclists, and see the local bike infrastructure improvements, so I headed right into the thick of it. What did I discover? First the infrastructure: beautiful green bike lanes on Commonwealth Ave, bike boxes, too.
The Bike Box on Commonwealth Ave - it makes intersections safer for cyclists.
The drivers? Boston drivers have a well-deserved reputation – if you signal to change lanes for example, the driver in the next lane might try to cut you off – but not with cyclists. It was a breeze pedaling around the city with their New Balance Hubway bike and when my test ride was over I simply headed to the kiosk closest to my hotel, lifted the front wheel up just 2 inches into the bike rack and ‘ker-chunk’, it’s returned to its locking bike rack.
Balboa Island, I can picture a Bikeshare in your future…
