Bike Theft Persists for Harvard Students

Mishy Harman ’08 never wanted a unicycle, but he got one.

It took him ten hours of labor at the Pfoho Grille to buy a replacement for the wheel that thieves lifted from his mountain bike last month.

“I was devastated,” he said. “The wheel was more than half of the cost of the bike.”

Harman is hardly the only Harvard student suddenly faced with missing or maimed means of transportation. Through the end of October, 109 other bikes have been reported stolen from campus this year. And despite sustained efforts by students and police, Harvard’s bicycle theft numbers seem unlikely to go down any time soon.

“Bicycle theft in the Cambridge area is incredibly high,” says Tim Ledlie ’02, founder of Quad Bikes, a non-profit bike shop. “It is a tough problem to solve.”

In the last four years, numbers have been similarly high: 149, 141, 78, and 138 bikes were stolen in the years 2001-2004, respectively.

National rankings consistently place Boston/Cambridge in the ten worst cities for bike theft. In 2002, it was ranked sixth by lock manufacturer Kryptonite, behind only New York, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

MAKING SENSE OF THE DATA

Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) spokesman Steven Catalano acknowledges that HUPD has had some difficulty addressing the high numbers of bike thefts.

“We have stings,” Catalano says, “but we don’t arrest a lot of bike thieves.”

Part of the problem may be that the data on bike theft yields almost no useful trends.

“Theft is pretty spread out,” Catalano says. He adds that the rack outside of Gund Hall, near Annenberg Hall on Cambridge Street, “could be considered a hot spot, but it is the biggest bike rack on campus, which could explain the larger number of thefts.”

Aside from a dip in the winter—when campus bicycle use drops dramatically—there are no clear temporal trends, either. Even during the summer months, when campus is filled with students who are unfamiliar with Cambridge, the rate does not increase significantly.

“The Summer School does a pretty good job of getting the word out,” says Catalano.

According to Catalano, likelihood of theft doesn’t even rest on the brand or quality of the bike.

“Thieves take the bikes that are easiest to get,” he says.

IN FOR THE NIGHT

Ledlie said that one discernible trend lies in the times of day when bicycles are stolen.

“There is a lot more theft at night, especially between the hours of one and six in the morning,” Ledlie says.

According to Ledlie, indoor storage would provide an easy solution. Taking bikes inside not only prevents theft, he says, but gets the bikes out of the elements and increases their longevity.

But Ledlie says that option is often unavailable.

“Indoor bike space is at a premium, and not sufficient at present,” he says. “Although some Houses, like Cabot and Adams, have good space that is accessible, most Houses do not. Maintenance of space and accessibility are just as important as having the space itself.”

Quincy House Master Robert P. Kirshner ’70 agrees that rack maintenance is a serious problem.

“[Our bike racks] are full of unused bikes,” he says. “We have bikes that have been locked to the bike racks for longer than the career of a student in Quincy House.”

LAZY BIKE OWNERS?

But many doubt that more indoor space would lead to less theft, noting that bike owners may just opt for convenience anyway.

“Many people don’t use the sheltered, lighted bike racks we have right next to the guard’s office, preferring to hitch their bikes to parking meters out on DeWolfe Street, causing trouble on the sidewalks and exposing their bikes to the elements, high-speed sidewalk snowplows, and to predators, but keeping them handy,” Kirshner says. “So you would have to ask whether people would use slightly less convenient indoor storage or not.”

H. Joseph O’Connor, Dunster House’s building manager, has similar reservations about creating new indoor storage space.

“I think the real estate required to store [bikes] indoors could be used more efficiently,” O’Connor says. “Dunster presently has racks to accommodate over 200 bicycles, in an area fairly well illuminated and trafficked, but less than half are actually being used.”

Catalano says that the ultimate responsibility should belong to bike owners. He noted that not all bikers follow proper locking procedure (going throuhg the frame, rack, and wheel) or use U-locks, which are more secure than cable locks.

“Some people are just lazy,” he says.

But Ledlie thinks the University community and its police force could do more.

“The problem could be improved by the police and the community looking out,” he says.

In the meantime, everyone is hoping for a solution to this chronic problem.

“One bike lost is a real injury to the person who loses it,” Kirshner says. “Have you had a bike stolen? It is like getting kicked in the gut.”

—Staff writer Matthew S. Blumenthal can be reached at mblument@fas.harvard.edu.