Putting the Brakes on Bicycle Thefts
By KAREN BIRCHARD
Bicycles are easy prey for campus criminals, who have learned to foil even the priciest locks. But bike thieves may have met their match at the University of Toronto.
The campus police department there has equipped several "bait bikes" with global-positioning-system beacons. Peter Franchi, coordinator of the program, describes how it works: When one of the bikes moves through a virtual barrier, or "geo-fence," that delineates a given area, he receives an e-mail alert on his BlackBerry that tells the bike's direction and speed. He then dispatches a mobile unit to catch the thief.
"One day we made four arrests," says Constable Franchi, who credits Nero Global Tracking, in Vancouver, B.C., for donating the technology.
None of the thieves caught so far has had any connection to the university.
The university hopes to roll out the next phase of the program in May or June. It may involve affixing students' bikes with hard-to-remove metal bar-code labels and stickers that warn, "This could be a bait bike."
This article is reprinted from The Chronicle of Higher Education.