London’s new Cycling Commissioner, the journalist Andrew Gilligan has met BikeRegister, to discuss bike marking as a deterrent to cycle theft. Gilligan had his own bike marked and registered by BikeRegister’s Sales Director James Brown, pictured.
BikeRegister is an online bicycle identification and registration, to identify stolen bikes and aid owner recovery. Some 48,000 bikes have been marked and registered onto BikeRegister by the Metropolitan Police, since June 2010.
After bike marking events in 2012 in two London ‘hotspot’ areas there was a 44pc bike theft reduction reported by officers in Chiswick; and a 45pc reduction in cycle thefts in Hackney.
Gilligan (pictured standing) said: “I had a bike stolen in London a couple of years ago but had no chance of having it recovered as it wasn’t marked. Police recover many bikes during their operations and if a bike has no identification marking on it, officers have no way of knowing who it belongs to. I would like to see thousands more bikes marked in London in order to deter cycle theft, which in turn will help to ensure the continued rise of cycling in the capital.”
