(Photos: Portland Police Bureau)
Last month’s inaugural U-lock? U-Rock! exchange was so popular that the Portland Police Bureau’s Bike Theft Task Force (BTTF) ran out of locks within the first hour.
“Before we even got set up, there was a line. We could not keep up with the demand,” Portland Police Bureau Officer Dave Sanders wrote in a debrief. “At one point, there was a line of cyclists a block long and so many people congregating around our tents, that it was interfering with other organizations.”
Officer Sanders and a crew of volunteers (more are needed!) and city partners will be prepared for the onslaught this Sunday when the program returns for Sunday Parkways Northeast.
The idea behind the exchange program is simple: Sanders and his partner on the bike theft beat, Officer Dave Bryant, have seen way too many bikes stolen due to the use of cable locks because they’re easily snipped by thieves. Using a good quality u-lock is one of the best things riders can do to prevent bike theft.
To receive a free u-lock, participants must bring in a used cable lock and their bicycle. Registration with Project 529 (free) can be done at the event and is also required to get a lock. As a bonus, anyone who exchanges an old cable lock will get the chance to cut it with a pair of bolt cutters.
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Huge demand for our U-lock exchange program. Unfortunately, we are all out, but we will offer this again next month! pic.twitter.com/Igjy4S9P3a
— PPB BTTF (@PPBBikeTheft) June 26, 2016
Officers Sanders and Bryant said about 600 people came by their booth and they’ve received national interest for the program with several other cities wanting to implement something similar.
The Task Force gave away 50 u-locks and registered 350 bikes at June’s Sunday Parkways event — all of which was made possible thanks to a partnership with Project 529 (whose CEO, J Allard, is a founding member of the task force) and ABUS, the lock maker. They plan to continue the program until they run out of locks (they were only able to afford 300 of them, purchased at a reduced price).
If you missed out they’ll have another batch of locks to give away at Sunday Parkways Northeast that opens this Sunday at 11:00 am. The Bike Theft Task Force booth will be at the southwestern tip of NE Oneonta Street adjacent to Woodlawn Park.
Due to the popularity of this program, the BTTF needs some help! Please consider giving us a hand on Sunday. If you can volunteer just drop us a line and we’ll get you set up. Or, you can just show up at the booth at 10:00 am on Sunday morning.
Learn more about the U-lock? U-Rock! program on the Bike Theft Task Force website.
Disclaimer: BikePortland is a (proud) member of the task force.
— Jonathan Maus, (503) 706-8804 – jonathan@bikeportland.org
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I’m glad they’re able to do this again. It’s a great idea!
Awesome that bike registration is part of this program.
This is a win-win. A great example of helpful government.
Last Sunday I rode through the Rose Quarter to downtown. When I was coasting down the pedestrian bridge and path that leads from Peace Memorial Park to the Eastbank Esplanade, a 30-40 year old African American male on a bike in front of me was loudly telling everyone he passed that he “ain’t go no brakes” and was using his foot to slow himself going down the ramp.
With a quick glance I confirmed the fact he was on a fixie, which led me to believe the ride was stolen. (If it was his bike, he would know it had no brakes.) I observed him for a bit and sure enough he stopped two teenagers on the Steel Bridge and offered to sell it to them for $60.
I feigned interest in the bike and said I needed to find an ATM. I was frustrated when I realized that I had no way to inform anyone about this encounter so they might recover their wheels. And yes, the thought crossed my mind to call the police, but I did not.
Thank you Project 529 AND PPB (Officer Dave Bryant)!!
Getting more people to use U-locks is great, but what the city really needs is more secure bike storage since bikes get stripped regardless how effective the lock is.
A lot of people would happily pay for bike lockers or other mechanisms. I would guess that the reason some people don’t commute is they don’t want to leave their bike locked outside all day.
Though if such conveniences were offered, it might become less acceptable to bring bikes in buildings…
Perhaps the answer is to require that bikes be permitted in all buildings at all times under all circumstances.
I was at the North Sunday Parkways with 100s of people in line thinking that they were going to get a new lock.
It turns out that the police failed to mention that
1. They only brought 50 locks to an event with tens of thousands of people at it
2. That you had to have a smart phone with you that can download their app
3. That you had to have a bicycle with you that has a serial number.
Needless to say, there were loads of frustrated people who wasted their time. Don’t get me wrong, I love this program. I hope the PPD improves their social media communications.
I apologize for your frustrations and any inconveniences that our poor social media communications caused you. I can take responsibility for that. We are trying to do better this time, and hope that there won’t be as much mis-information given by various outlets. Thanks for your patience as we fine-tune this pilot project. 🙂
Let us know if this info is unclear and we can add clarification. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/article/584150.
To answer a few things in your post,
2. You do not need a smart phone to register your bike, though this would allow you to register it on your own = save time standing in line while we do it for you. Once registered, you could show us that you completed this and we can proceed with the cable lock exchange.
3. Your bike does not have to have a serial number. In fact, if it does not have a serial number (though a small percentage of bikes), we have a great solution for that – the 529 shield. (also offered free of charge, saving you $)
Hope to see you there!
Dave
The first time bikeportland reported about the BTTF’s u-lock for cable lock exchange program to fight bike theft, I wondered on the specifics of funding the effort. I asked in a comment to the previous story, about how many locks the program might be able to have available, and how providing them could be funded. Nobody responding in the comment section, seemed to have the answer.
Understandable that the partnership program wouldn’t be able to afford a giveaway of more than the modest, 50 locks…but to not have let people know in advance of the event, that only this number of locks would be available free, seems like poor practice.
This current story reports that 300 locks will be available free to people. That’s far better than 50. I can imagine there’s easily 300 people in the city that need a u-lock to secure their bike, and that really don’t have the bucks to get one. I think it’s possible though, that if after the 300 were given away, additional u-locks were made available for say…50 percent of retail…there may be many people far more able to afford that amount of money, encouraging them to get a u-lock then and there, than they would having to pay more, somewhere else.
If they only have fifty locks per event, they need to proceed to spread out the give-away over a course of hours.
This isn’t rocket science. Pretty much all the other vendors with a free give-away have you listen to their pitch or “register for a chance to win!” Or enter the drawing or spin the wheel or whatever. Pretty sure the police could do the same type of thing.
You know what would be really great? Have the first five winners present for a demonstration at noon. They lock their bikes with old lock, and police get to proceed with their demonstrations and easily steal the biked. Crowd cheers. People learn. Police proceed to get more publicity and info out to people — and it just works way better.
While I wholly advocate the U lock, and one as small as you can stand to fit around everything, there’s one thing that smacks me as odd.
I really haven’t felt paranoid about where I park in Tulsa. The city proper is about the same size, except we have far fewer attached suburbs. But it feels like a much larger city than Portland. Personally, I blame the insane skyscrapers that would totally violate pretty much all of Portland’s zoning laws, unique and interesting to look at architecture, and the fact something’s going on every weekend, whereas Portland is the generic city to film in because it looks like everywhere that has pine trees and there’s not really anything going on except for Rose Festival, which just needs to stop (Oaks Park does it better, cheaper, any week of the year, anyway; and I’m not just talking the midway; literally the whole thing). But feel pretty confident in just rolling up, drop front wheel off and lock through front, frame, rear, staple in Tulsa, and not worry about people stealing my cheap flasher taillight or my fenders here. Or even just to run in and get something at a shop or cafe that doesn’t have a staple nearby, through the front and the frame, essentially as a poor-man’s cafe lock, to keep someone from making off with it while I’m inside for 25-30 minutes.
I really can’t say the same as my hometown, in which a screwdriver is pretty much requisite to park. So that mountable items such as lights and a computer can be removed and taken with. Because yes, if you can put it on a bike frame, it’s been stolen off my bike, within an hour, in Portland. Sometimes while parked in an indoor facility requiring a key to access.
So, this whole “trade your lock” thing rather than spending police time on sting operations and removing thieves from the streets smacks me as on the same level as police offering women to trade skirts for jeans. Or as Transit Police told me after I was assaulted on the blue line between Washington Park and Sunset for holding hands with my boyfriend, to “not be gay.”
I guess Portland’s gotta Portland…
You can make the demo about the ease of cutting cables even more dramatic with a Felco or similar cable cutter. You can slip it in your back pocket, and it will cut any cable it can get its jaws around. That’s what I use for similar demonstrations, and people’s jaws drop when they realize a tool that’s so easily concealed, unlike the big bolt cutters in the photo, can snip a lock in a motion that doesn’t look much different than using a key.