Wheels in Demise: Keeping your bike safe

With a new bike share system and more bike lanes planned, Pittsburgh is quickly becoming one of the nation’s bike-friendly cities.

Though Pitt doesn’t keep data on how many of its students commute by bike, Pittsburgh has seen a 408 percent increase in its number of cyclists since 2000, now at 2.2 percent of the city’s population, according to U.S. Census data. And starting this fall, Pittsburgh’s Department of City Planning will install new bike lanes to connect Forbes Avenue to Schenley Drive, and lanes along the O’Hara, Bigelow, Bayard corridor. But with more cyclists on the roads, Pitt Police and local bike advocacy groups urge riders to keep their set of wheels safe.

Mike Carroll, the event manager at BikePGH, a non-profit organization that advocates active transportation in Pittsburgh, stresses the importance of locking bikes up especially on university campuses.

Carroll and other experts recommend certain locks over others as well as registering bikes on the national Bike Index, an online service that tracks and recovers stolen bikes.

 Carroll said people use inadequate locks such as cheap cable locks coated in plastic, which thieves can easily cut. Riders should invest in a U-Lock, which is shaped like a big metal ring.

“It’s not impossible to steal [a bike with a U-Lock] but makes it more difficult,” Carroll said,

Carroll said riders should lock a bike by its frame and not the wheel. If a rider locks a bike by the wheel, a thief may can walk away with the rest of the bike and leave the wheel and lock behind.

As such, Robert Mckinney, owner of Iron City Bikes in Oakland stopped selling cable locks in his shop. He said many people would come buy a new bike and later complain their bike was stolen from the cable lock they bought from them.

“Cable locks are terrible and so easy to cut. Use a basic lock or a heavy duty chain,” Mckinney said.

Pitt’s Student Government Board, too, has offered advice and made efforts to ensure students’ bikes are safe on campus.

Sara Klein, an SGB member, hosted a pedestrian and bike safety day in the fall 2014 semester. At the event, students registered their bikes to the police in case of theft. Klein said 25 students registered their bikes at the event. The registering service is also on Pitt’s Parking, Transportation and Services website. This year,student cyclists will have the option to attend SGB’s Safety Fair on Sept. 25 to learn safety tips on transportation in Pittsburgh.

“Obviously registering your bike will help in the event it’s stolen as well as locking your bike up with the bike racks provided all around campus,” Klein said.

Natalie Dall, Vice President and Chief of Cabinet on SGB, said she is working with SGB Facilities and Transportation Chair Rohit Anand as well as Pitt police officer Guy Johnson to plan the Safety Fair for this Fall.

Dall said they are still in the early stages of planning the fair. Their plan, Dall said, is to have tables set up with information and demonstrations on different forms of safety within the main categories of transportation safety and personal safety.

According to Johnson, Pitt police received 20 reports of stolen bikes on campus in 2014 — since the start of 2015 there have been 10 reports.

For Pitt student Samantha Winkelmann, bike safety advice came a few weeks too late.

Late in July, Winkelmann, a senior communication major, was riding her bicycle back to her house on Bates Street. When she reached her front porch, she locked her bike to a railing with a cable lock and stepped inside. Approximately 20 minutes after she entered her home, an unknown person cut her cable lock and rode off with her bike. Winkelmann was devastated.

“My bike was my main source of transportation,” she said. “It wasn’t new and it wasn’t fancy but it worked.”