The Netherlands and Amsterdam in particular are global examples of how the bicycle can be made the basis of a healthy and sustainable transport system. But every year about half a million of them are stolen. It might seem that stealing such a quantity in a country of just 17 million people should jeopardize the entire model. However, original research that tracked a hundred GPS-equipped bikes shows that thieves don’t get them very far. In fact, after a few days, they return to serve as a means of transport around the city, although they were assembled by someone else.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA) and the Technical University of Delft (Netherlands) have set out to find the whereabouts of so many stolen bicycles. In Amsterdam alone, between 28,500 (according to city officials) and 80,000 (estimated by cycling associations) are stolen. Theft is so common that many go unreported, so the number could be closer to the second than the first. Fábio Duarte, principal investigator at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, a lab that aims to take the pulse of cities with technology and apply it to urban design, says they started with a prejudice. As with vehicles and other stolen items, “we thought they would be taken abroad, maybe to eastern countries,” he says. But they were much closer.
The investigation, carried out in cooperation with Amsterdam City Council, has confirmed that many bicycles are stolen in the Dutch city. In his case, they spread a hundred of them over some of the bike’s concentration areas, like squares or near train stations. They all had padlocks and they were very careful not to be conspicuous by their appearance or condition: the 100 were used but there were a dozen makes and in all conditions from rusty to almost new. They had hidden a GPS in the light or under the saddle and tracked them between June and December 2021. The result, published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, is that the thieves took 70 of them.
“The mafias steal them, but they sell them to the people of Amsterdam. It’s even possible that someone buys a bike that was stolen some time ago.”
Fábio Duarte, Principal Investigator at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, USA
“Where you park the bike is key,” says Duarte. “The more there are, the more likely it is to be stolen,” he adds. They believe the logic of this data is that bike thieves use the accumulation to let their theft go unnoticed. “If it’s just a few, there’s always a chance the owner is around,” Duarte explains. Other data from the study is relatively obvious: muggings are more common near train stations and other transit points for many people, and the vast majority take place at night.
Using GPS tracking, they were able to answer the question posed by scientists, but also by local authorities: where are they going? Well, only two of the 70 stolen bikes left Amsterdam or the surrounding area and none left the country. After a few days with no movement or with random movements, the bikes are tracked according to a pattern of two trips with the same round trip. That means another Amsterdammer drives it to and from work.
“We thought the mafias would steal them, but we didn’t know if they took them to another country,” says Duarte. In fact, by analyzing the data online, they conclude that at least a third of the bikes had been stolen by a mafia. “What happens is that the mafia steals them, but they sell them to the residents of Amsterdam. It is even possible for someone to buy a bike that was stolen some time ago.”
Two of the hundred bicycles used in the social experiment. Equipped with a hidden GPS, they were distributed throughout the city with the associated padlock. 70 were stolen. MIT’s Senseable City Lab
Amsterdam pioneered an experiment 50 years ago that aimed to generalize the use of bicycles in a traffic-choked city. To do this, they launched the “White Bikes” project with a fleet of 10,000 bikes spread across the city for everyone to use. It was the first shared mobility system decades before it was even talked about. But it turned out to be a failure and the plan fell into the so-called tragedy of the commons: since they belonged to everyone, they belonged to nobody and many were destroyed, while others were taken home by thieves and painted a different color. Now the paradox is that theft gives value to the bike and the thieves protect them from falling into this tragedy.
Regarding the bike theft, Titus Venverloo, a researcher at Delft University and MIT and co-author of the study, comments that when they analyze the trajectories of the stolen bikes, they find “that they return to a regular pattern of mobility quite quickly.” means most are used straight away or sold quickly, “so these bikes can be made available again for general mobility around the city,” he adds.He also highlights a certain positive aspect of theft: “The wide availability of cheap bikes of dubious origin also seems to promote the acceptance of the bicycle in the city, since the means of transport is very accessible for everyone.” And he points to a third aspect: “Moreover, because of the great cycling culture in the Netherlands, Amsterdammers are aware of the problem almost used to bike theft, so they can quickly buy another bike.” utet therefore: “The impact of bicycle theft on a city’s mobility system is not large, but the impact on the victim of bicycle theft is obvious”.
“These results tie in with the approaches of certain anarchist groups in the Netherlands who postulated bicycle theft in the 1980s”
Pedro Malpica, sociologist and expert in sustainable mobility
Pedro Malpica, sociologist and expert on sustainable mobility, comments: “These results are related to the approaches of certain anarchist groups in the Netherlands, who postulated bicycle theft in the 1980s. This was not so much because of their disdain for private property, but because they were convinced that it was a viable system of shared use of transport.” But also Malpica, who wrote her thesis on cycle mobility in the transition to a new city model and in Seville remembers that theft can have an undesirable effect: “Anyone who starts using a bicycle and it is stolen gives up commuting by bicycle. Fortunately, he adds, his field studies would show that the existence of public bicycle systems mitigates this problem. “They don’t want to buy a second one after the first theft, but they’re not giving up on urban cycling.” Both Malpica and Duarte believe that giving police priority to prosecuting the mafia would be a measure to encourage the use of bicycles as an urban mode of transport.
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