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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Bait Bikes at the University of Toronto

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Finally, someone is doing something about bike theft.

The University of Toronto Campus Police are starting a bait bike program. Bikes with GPS positioning devices hidden on them will be positioned in high bike theft zones on the U of T’s downtown campus. When they’re stolen, the thieves will be tracked down and arrested.

The campus police are publicizing the program in order to discourage bike theft. A similar program in Victoria, B.C., reduced bike theft by 20% — and they still caught plenty of thieves.

As part of the publicity, a campus police officer was interviewed today by Andy Barrie (RealPlayer) on CBC Metro Morning.

Toronto Police Services are helping out with the program, but you have to wonder why they didn’t lead it across Toronto. People tend to have fairly low regard for the campus police, but they have gone way up in my estimation. Perhaps if the program is successful the police will extend it across the city.

Along with the excellent Bikechain free bike repair program, this initiative makes the University of Toronto a serious supporter of cycling.

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4 comments

  1. Wow! I’m very impressed! Some of the Bikechain folks are also studying Take the Tooker as part of the sustainability program.

  2. Sure, let everyone know.

    GREAT IDEA.

    Now bike thieves are aware of this, and will locate and remove the GPS devices.

    It’d be a much better idea to station snipers on rooftops.

  3. If you read the posting carefully and listen to the interview, you’ll see that it’s part of the program to let people know about the GPS bikes, because that has been shown to discourage thefts in the first place. The devices are, apparently, small and carefully concealed. Also, you’ll see that despite the publicity, lots of thieves still get caught.