Bikes thefts from locked TransLink parkades up this year: police
Posted November 24, 2022 10:20 am.
Last Updated November 24, 2022 2:33 pm.
Despite using two different locks, Jorge Jimenez says his $1,700 e-bike was stolen from a locked parkade at the Metrotown SkyTrain Station in Burnaby Friday.
Accessible only to registered bike parkade users and monitored by TransLink CCTV, there are about a dozen such spaces across Metro Vancouver where Jimenez thought his bike would be safe in.
“Two and a half hours after I come back and I did not find my bike anymore there,” he told CityNews. “It’s supposed to be a safe place for me to put up my bike.”
Jimenez says when he came back to the parkade, his two locks were cut, adding it looked like it was done with a power tool.
“I’m surprised because it took time and took effort to go through the locks and the person had that time available to do it. There was nothing that stopped him,” he said. “Even if it’s a secure location, it has all the locks, and safety features, somebody was able to come in with a tool, and had the time to do it, and nobody was alerted for it.”
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Metro Vancouver Transit Police says Jimenez’s bike was one of two stolen from that particular parkade over the weekend, and no arrests have been made.
Police data shows bike thefts from parkades are up this year — 22 have been reported from January to August, compared to 15 for the whole year in 2021.
“We have noticed a trend where you will see a couple of thefts happen quite frequently at one location. So, you’ll see one theft, and then maybe possibly, even later in the day you’ll see another theft. And that sometimes continues for a day or two and then you won’t see thefts there again for a while, and that continues throughout the year,” transit police Const. Amanda Steed told CityNews.
She says police are investigating the thefts, adding there are steps bike owners can take to help prevent their rides from being stolen.
“Anything that you put out in the public is not 100 per cent safe, of course,” she said. “You want to have a good quality lock, you want to double lock, you want to record your serial number, register that bike with project 529 so that when it is recovered, if it is stolen, then we can contact you and return that bike to you.”
However, Jimenez says he took the steps which Steed recommends, adding he won’t be able to trust the Metrotown parkade again.
“Having a bike, and not being able to park it in a place to go and do whatever you need to do, then you might as well not have it, or you might as well not leave home, and that’s not right,” he said.
