Abstract
Urban authorities are continuously drawing up policies to promote cycling among commuters. However, these initiatives are counterproductive for the targeted objectives because they increase opportunities for bicycle theft. This paper explores Inner London as a case study to address place-specific risk factors for bicycle theft at the street-segment level while controlling for seasonal variation. The presence of certain public amenities (e.g., bicycle stands, railway stations, pawnshops) was evaluated against locations of bicycle theft between 2013 and 2016 and risk effects were estimated using negative binomial regression models. Results showed that a greater level of risk stemmed from land-use facilities than from area-based socioeconomic status. The presence of facilities such as train stations, vacant houses, pawnbrokers and payday lenders increased bicycle theft, but no evidence was found that linked police stations with crime levels. The findings have significant implications for urban crime prevention with respect to non-residential land use.
Highlights
Data Availability Statement: The crime data used in this paper are freely available from the UK police website
Bicycle thefts decreased from year to year especially during the summer period, a factor that might be due to interventions such as safer locking mechanisms and improved parking facilities [2,18]
This paper has examined in detail the influence of different urban facilities on place-specific risk of bicycle theft
Summary
Data Availability Statement: The crime data used in this paper are freely available from the UK police website (https://data.police.uk/). Amenity data can be accessed from the following sites: 1) Updated OpenStreetMap data can be obtained in vector format from http://download.geofabrik.de/europe/ great-britain/england/greater-london.html. 2) Roads and boundary data from the Ordnance Survey is available from the site https://www.ordnancesurvey. 3) Data on other public amenities are available from https://www. Urban authorities grapple with a less explored risk related to cycling, namely theft. A case in point is England and Wales where bicycle theft continues to rise, even while the overall offending rate is declining [13]. Studies show that bicycle owners are three times more likely to lose possession through theft than are owners of automobiles and motorcycles [2,14,15]. Repetitive victimization greatly undermines policies to promote cycling because a large proportion of victims neither replace their stolen bicycles nor resume cycling [2,16,17]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
