At Tsinghua University, students are said to spend more on bike locks than on bikes. A friend of mine, a senior, is on her fourth bike. I met a faculty member who went to get her bike just as it was being stolen. She saw how it was done: The thief had a large number of keys. She shouted at the thief to stop, a crowd gathered, and he gave the bike back. Later she encountered him while buying pork: He was the butcher.
Same here in The Netherlands. The population is some 16 million people, and how many bikes are being stolen? In 2006 760000 (760 thousand!) bikes were stolen. For young people/students, one out of seven bikes get stolen. Who is stealing the bikes? Junkies and general low-life, then selling the bike for some fast money ($15 or less). Some students then seem to consider bikes to be ‘public goods’, so when your bike is not there anymore, you just take another. So if you do not want your bike to get stolen, invest in good bike-locks. Also, in my hometown, in the city center there are a couple of underground ‘garages’ just for bikes. These are operated by the local government, employing people that normally have problems getting employed via the regular routes. Stalling your bike there is free of charge and quite safe!
This is a big problem in low-trust countries. It usually stems from the following ironic vicious cycle.
In Hungary, petty (and not so petty) theft is quite common. Gypsy peddlers come around peddling stolen goods, which people are happy to purchase from them at a ‘discount’. Not caring they are generating market demand for stolen goods. Ergo, more demand for stolen goods, more goods stolen. Ad infinitum.
I once read that all bikes in the Netherlands weigh the same: a cheap bike is heavy and does not require much in the way of a lock, but a good, light bike requires at least two good locks, whose combined weight brings the net back up to that of a cheap bike.
If roving thieves are carrying key rings loaded with possible matching keys, it seems that combination locks, rather than locks with keys, would be more secure.
Also … the butcher! What!?
When I worked delivering food by bicycle (in New York City), thieves would come by all the time trying to sell us bikes. I realized that restaurants that deliver food were the prime market for stolen bikes. Later observations bore this out. Some local restaurants were using relatively expensive bikes to deliver food.
Wonder if the butcher made deliveries.
Many people have told me that bike theft is rampant in Amsterdam. When I was there, I saw many bikes locked with extremely cheap cable locks, or not locked to anything but themselves. Maybe the problem is cultural? Living in New York, of course my locks are worth the same as my bike.