If you ride a bike in Berlin, odds are you’ve likely encountered one well-known and much-maligned rite of passage: a missing wheel, a seat having taken its leave, maybe the whole damn bike is gone. Is this just something that the 500,000 Berliners who ride a bike every day have to accept, that bike theft is as ubiquitous as Wegbier and “nur Barzahlung”.
“It is actually a scandal that only 4[.6]% of bicycle thefts in Berlin are solved,” says Solveig Selzer, political advisor for the German National Cyclist’s Association (ADFC). “Four percent – that’s practically nothing. It’s an ongoing issue, both because the theft rate is not decreasing and the clearance rate is not improving.”
The most recent numbers from the Berlin Police paint a dismal scene: in 2023, the daily average of bikes stolen was 78. Between August 2022 and July 2023, Berliners reported 22,745 bicycle thefts, with Mitte, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Pankow and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf leading the way as bike theft hot spots.
Berlin’s reigning coalition has had a clear message from the jump: have you tried a car? Since taking office in April 2023, the CDU-SPD government has slashed investment in bike infrastructure, recently whittling down both the number of planned city bike lanes and their width. “The CDU’s election campaign slogan was even: ‘Berlin. Don’t let the car be banned’,” says Madeleine Richter, a staffer for Oda Hassepaß, the Green Party spokesperson for transport policy in the Berlin Parliament. “At the same time, the government repeatedly emphasises how much they are doing for Berlin’s safety.”
When a mere 2.74% of Berlin’s streets are considered “safe” to cycle on, the CDU-SPD coalition is making quite clear who they’re prioritising. For the Green Party, it’s been an uphill battle; in June 2023 they proposed the Bicycle Theft Protection programme to the Berlin Parliament, which called for the establishment of a dedicated city-wide investigation group for bicycle theft at the State Office of Criminal Investigation. The theft protection programme also proposed linking Berlin police with officers from other German states to crack down on the national sale of stolen bikes. Using GPS tracking to follow illegal sales, the programme would focus on some of the city’s worst theft areas with plainclothes officers, cracking down on stolen bike marketplaces, on- and offline.
The proposal was voted down in June this year. Both the Greens and the ADFC favour a criminal justice approach, pushing for a special unit to investigate bike crimes and put pressure on the organised crime syndicates. According to Richter, it’s simply the most effective way to try to get Berlin’s 4.6% bike theft clearance rate closer to other German cities – like Munich’s, which was 9.5% in 2022, or Freiburg’s, which was at 8% at the most recent count from 2023.
Others have argued that it’s often difficult for police to investigate and solve bike thefts – much of the time the trail is relatively cold. GPS trackers can improve your odds, but not significantly; the rough location usually isn’t enough evidence for police to search an apartment or van. Investigating dozens of bike thefts each day also isn’t necessarily an efficient use of public money or police resources – though some effort has been made in that direction. In 2020, Berlin set up the Bicycle Coordination Office (Koordinierungsstelle Fahrrad) within the State Criminal Police Office, says Richter. But they’re “a strategic committee of the Berlin Police that meets on an ad-hoc basis and whose members perform the task as a ‘concurrent task.’” They only analyse and evaluate bike theft information – prosecuting bike thefts is still up to the individual city neighbourhoods.
Both the ADFC and the Greens also call for more safe bike parking options in the city, like the 50,000 public bike parking spots at public transportation stops, says the ADFC’s Selzer. Unfortunately, because money is not currently being spent on city planning, it’s likely this plan will be delayed.
YOUR BIKE, YOUR PROBLEM
Most advice on how to avoid your bike being stolen focuses on the individual bike owner. They’re not necessarily new tips: lock your bicycle appropriately to an immovable structure in highly visible areas with a high-quality lock. Berlin bike owners can also get a free serial number from the police department, which should, in theory, make it easier to find if lost or stolen.
High numbers of bike theft are also not necessarily a Berlin-specific problem. Even the famously bike-friendly Copenhagen hit a 10-year record for bike thefts in September 2023 with 13,000 stolen and a solve rate of just 1%. Berlin still has things to learn from other cities, though, says Richter. “Only 1% of all German train stations have a bicycle parking garage,” Richter alleges. “In Eberswalde, however, a great bicycle parking garage has been built. There is space for over 600 securely parked bicycles … Unfortunately, Berlin is still a long way off.”
Ensuring that there are free bicycles to use all over the city for anyone who needs them – and abolishing private property, while we’re at it – would be the real answer, but for now, other community and individual workarounds might also help. Making your bike uniquely unattractive to thieves with tape, bad paint jobs, stickers and the like is one suggestion, as is covering your bike with a full-bike cover for a literal ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach.
Some preliminary research has been done on the psychological impact of simply displaying images of “watching eyes”, illustrations of an eye or set of eyes that appear to be observing passersby, above bicycle racks to dissuade theft; from the limited study on an English university campus, it appears to have worked. In the Vancouver area, local businesses set up a loan programme to allow café patrons the use of a heavy-duty lock, and a local non-profit set up a bike valet with the idea that when people feel like their bikes are safe, they spend more time at local businesses.
Obviously, neoliberal DIY-ism isn’t ideal. “It is important to emphasise that it is the job of the police to solve crimes. Citizens should not be made responsible, especially as there are many people who cannot afford expensive locks, insurance or GPS trackers,” says Richter. “Protecting the most vulnerable should always be the top priority. Politicians set priorities and allocate budget funds accordingly. Unfortunately, the priority of the current Berlin government is not on people who cycle.”
