An increasingly popular app is offering victims of bike theft a hassle-free way to get the word out and recover their bikes.
529 Garage is available on both Apple and Android devices, and allows users to create a profile for their bikes to put into a national registry. This includes the bike’s make and model, year, serial number, as well as pictures of the bike itself.
In the event that the bike is stolen, app users can send out an alert that goes onto social media,
Colleen Cornock, supervisor of the Crime Prevention Team, says the app is seeing an increase in users here in the Central Okanagan.
“Over 2,000 residents have signed up, but already this week, with us being at Bike to Work Week, we’ve seen quite a bit of an interest, so I anticipate those numbers to be significantly higher by the end of the week,” says Cornock.
To help cyclists who want to register for the app, the Crime Prevention Team will be stationed at the following locations in Kelowna later this week:
So far, 16 stolen bikes have been recovered in the region thanks to 529 Garage.
The number of bike thefts in Kelowna has gone down almost 27 percent in the last 3 years. Since January of this year, there have been 115 reported bike thefts, as opposed to the 157 thefts reported during this same time back in 2015.