Some people are trying to eliminate bike theft once and for all. They’re developing an app to help people track lost bikes. It would connect bike communities locally, and eventually, across the country.
One of the developers says this is a personal issue. Ricardo Pierre-Louis’ bike was stolen when he was 8 years old, which he admits was partly his fault since he wasn’t very careful. To teach him a lesson, his mom didn’t buy him another one. It’s been a while since then, but he wants to help other people who go through the same thing.
No one buys a bike and plans to lose it or have it get stolen. But we know that happens. When it does, you hope someone notices and does something about it. When it happened to one of Pierre-Louis’ friends a couple years ago, she posted a picture of her bike on Facebook and someone replied.
“He got the bike,” said Pierre-Louis. “He threw it on his back. He posted on Facebook, ‘hey Flo. Here’s your bike. Come pick it up at the Bike Project whenever you have the chance.’ Just the power of social media to increase lines of communication through people.”
That got the wheels turning on a big idea called Bike Net. The crime fighting app works as simply as Instagram.
“Imagine registering your bike is as simple as taking a picture with your phone and the same thing with reporting or trying to recover a bike,” said Pierre-Louis. “If you see a bike that looks like it could be stolen or you see suspicious activity, you could take a photo of it.”
All that information would go to a feed, where people from all over can post or keep an eye out. Pierre-Louis says he hopes they can take it even farther than that.
“Imagine you have your bike stolen and you got a push notification that a bicycle was reported stolen in your area matching your stolen bike description,” said Pierre-Louis. “That would be a game-changing idea and that would allow everyone to have eyes and ears everywhere when it comes to cycling crime.”
Developers are still working out the details, but riders say they think it’s a good idea so stolen bikes can end up back with their rightful owner.
“Anything to make it more accessible to people is good,” said Carl Schultz, who is a graduate student at the University of Illinois.
“We have a really solid team that is capable, not just of making this happen, but bring it to the next level,” said Pierre-Louis.
Those developers put together a Kickstarter fundraising page. To find out more about it, click here.
Those developers have already done some extra homework before launching the app. They’ve been talking with police departments and city planners. So far, they say they’ve had a positive response from those community groups.
Unlike other bike registries, our app requires only a picture and a brief description of the bike. Registration can be done quickly, by anyone with access to a mobile device or the internet. Instead of relying on police and other local authorities, we empower the community itself to track and recover bikes. A beta version of this app has already been produced, but we need your support to further develop the app. We want to maintain and scale it for use beyond the Champaign-Urbana community but we need a larger development budget to do so. Your support will allow us to continue to support our developers and talent as we continue.