A quick scroll on social media platforms shows how common bike thefts are in Winnipeg, and a traveller visiting the city could not get away from it. “I was there for about ten days visiting my family—and then I was just seeing a friend before I left on my last night in town,” said Justin Turner, describing his trip to Winnipeg. Turner, a former resident of Winnipeg who now lives in Revelstoke, B.C., brought his bike with him to Winnipeg. “I had it on a bike rack on the back of my vehicle, and I decided I would just U-lock it to the bike rack, because I figured that would be sufficient since I wasn’t going to be away from the car long.” He did not expect thieves to take the entire bike rack with the bike. “I was gone for about 20 minutes, I came back, and the thieves had taken the bike rack right off the car.” The City of Winnipeg’s website tells owners to register their bicycles with 529 Garage—an app operating in Winnipeg and across North America. “I think Winnipeg has been on the system for two years, and they’ve already returned almost 100 bicycles,” said Robert Brunt, chief outreach officer of Project 529. “Average bicycle return now is about $2,000. 100 times 2,000—that’s a lot of money and bicycles that got returned by the city.” For a path forward, unique serial numbers, like vehicle identification numbers on cars, can change the world for cyclists. “A standardized system would be a game changer, because then you would walk into the police department and go, ‘Oh, my bicycle—modern, black, serial number is such and such—is missing again,’” Brunt described.
