A research team from the MIT Senseable Lab and the TU Delft empirically examined the bicycle theft in Amsterdam – and came to a surprising conclusion. We spoke to the researchers involved, Titus Venverloo and Fábio Duarte, about the economics of bicycle theft.
How did you come up with the idea of tracking stolen bikes?
Fábio Duarte: Tens of thousands of bikes are stolen every year. what happens to them An often aired hypothesis says that they migrate directly to Eastern Europe. Is that correct? We didn’t know. So we asked the city to give us 100 used bikes. We then provided them with small trackers and parked them at hot spots known to the police. Then we had to wait and see what happens.
How long did you have to wait?
Titus Venverloo: It felt like an eternity. The first wheel moved after only two days. But we had to wait until we had enough data together. It took a total of five or six months until 70 bikes were stolen and we could say: now we can analyze the data for patterns.
Have bikes stolen for research purposes
Let me get this straight: 70 percent of the bikes were stolen? How can that be? What locks did you use?
Duarte: We chained most of the bikes. But in some areas there is no infrastructure to connect bikes. We simply secured the wheels with the built-in ring locks.
I assume these were stolen first?
Venverloo: Yes. I live in Amsterdam and I bought a new lock the very next day.
I have the impression that the locks in Amsterdam are often more expensive than the bikes that go with them. Can a bike ever be ridden enough not to be stolen?
Venverloo: In Amsterdam, bikes are always stolen, no matter what condition – especially those generic black bikes that no one would recognize anymore. In addition, apparently everyone buys stolen bikes here. This is one of the most interesting findings from our research: Most stolen bikes stay where they are instead of being moved to other cities or abroad.
Bicycle theft, the somewhat different circular economy
So, cynically, this is a bike-sharing system.
Venverloo: Yes, a kind of circular economy. However, with a regular bike sharing system, all people pay the same fees. In Amsterdam, on the other hand, the costs are distributed very unequally: some people have their bikes stolen all the time, others only every three years or not at all.
What other results surprised you?
Venverloo: On the technical side, how well the trackers were able to tell us what was going on.
Were those regular GPS trackers off the shelf?
Venverloo: We built the trackers ourselves from off-the-shelf parts for about 25 euros each. Unlike classic GPS trackers, they do not require a mobile network, but work with the Sigfox network. Although they can only transmit very small data packets, they are very energy-efficient. Normal trackers work maybe two weeks on one battery charge, our four and a half years. The study made this possible.
Where did you hide the trackers? If I were a bike thief, I would first search every bike for trackers.
Venverloo: We did a little preliminary study with passers-by and told them: There is a tracker attached to this bike – please try to find it. We partially placed the trackers under the saddle and covered them with the same type of leather. We also attached some of them openly to the rear reflectors. Nobody discovered her. But we were also a bit lucky, because with these kinds of bikes for around 100 euros, not even professional bike thieves expect a tracker, because they usually cost 150 to 200 euros.