Manchester Bike Theft Hotspots Revealed

I DON’T own a bicycle. It's still too painful.

But an ever increasing number of people do. Cycling has recently overtaken football as Britain's third most popular participation sport (1st swimming, 2nd athletics (do you mean jogging? Ed?)) with over two million adults now regularly riding.

Which makes you wonder how anyone manages to cycle through any of the Piccadillys at all without being Grand Theft Auto’d off their bicycle.

Boardman, Hoy, Wiggo, Pendleton, Froome, Cavendish, Boris, that 'pleb' minister, they've all done their bit for cycling. The 2014 Tour de France's stint in Yorkshire is expected to attract four to five million spectators over three days. 

How did it become so popular? Well, the Olympics mostly. And increased commuter frustration at chewing the hair on the back of each other's heads. One thing's for sure though. There's a lot more bikes on the street. All ripe for the plucking.

Ripe for the plucking?

I once felt the sting of the stolen bike. I was thirteen, my bike, a brand new black and orange Carrera, was the business. My schoolmates thought I was the dogs. The most flash gift I’d ever received, gone, well, in a flash. Pinched from outside a Cleethorpes corner shop in under twenty seconds. Tears. Lesson learnt.

I’ve never owned a bike since. Like a recently squashed dog it’s still too raw. Perhaps if I’d had the Police crime mapping service I’d have known those bike-lifting bastards hunted by that corner. Unfortunately, the internet thing hadn’t yet erupted, we’d only just started sending each other phallic symbols constructed of ‘=’ and ‘8’ via Nokia 3210s.

Manchester Crime Map

This crime mapping tool has been around for years, but we still can’t stop playing with it. It’s the rubix cube of statistics. Handy too. Street specific crime statistics right at your finger-ends.

Did you know, for example, that in September 2013 there were two reported incidents of weapon possession in Leftbank, Spinningfields. No you didn't. Unless it was you.

Crime mapping (if that's your thing) helps people make informed decisions on where to live, where to play, where to avoid in the darker hours, where not to leave cars, where to keep mobiles pocketed and the best spots to pick up some drugs. All narrowed down to individual streets - it could make you stop in all day. Clever stuff though (although the police do concede that incidents are not on-the-dot accurate, more in the region of).

Our only gripe being that they take a month or so to publish. It’s as though the police have better things to do. Like this:

Since May 2013 the online service has been detailing reported bicycle thefts specifically. According to the Manchester city centre crime mapping tool, in the period from the beginning of May 2013 to the end of November 2013 there have been 373 bicycle thefts around the city centre (the police have told us the figure is 340, but at the time of writing crime mapping reports 373), averaging 53 a month and accounting for 3.7% of all reported crime in the city centre. This gave us an idea…

Where is the worst area in Manchester city centre to leave your bike? Where is it most likely to get nicked? Where do the bikenappers prowl?

Well, we’ve spent hours chewing over the past seven months of numbers to tell you just that. The results are in (Hint: Try to avoid the Piccadillys).

(By their own admission, the police crime mapping service is not uniformly precise. So the areas we’ve worked to are differential in size and loosely based around a significant place eg. Spinningfields or Victoria Station. We understand the inherent variables, the Spinningfields area, for example, is around five times the size of the Albert Square area.)

Reported thefts are in the seven month period from the beginning of May 2013 to the end of November 2013.

ON or AROUND:

1. Piccadilly Gardens – 38
2. Piccadilly Station – 30
3. Market St East/Debenhams/Church St – 30
4. St Peter’s Square – 26
5. Spinningfields/Quay St/Bridge St – 23
6. King St/Brown St/Pall Mall – 20
7. Central Coach Station/Sackville Gardens – 20
8. Universities North Campus/Oxford Rd/Chester St – 20
9. Marks and Spencer/Selfridges – 17
10. Albert Square – 15
11. Victoria Station - 15

So there you have it. Seemingly then you’d have to be foolish to leave your bicycle anywhere near a Piccadilly ‘Something’. Unless you're in a rush. Or believe in the essential goodness of humanity. 

A rough 'Where Not To' guide to bike parking

If you consider Market St East/Debenhams/Church St to lay within the boundaries of Piccadilly Gardens – which it does – then a whopping 68 bicycle thefts have taken place around this area in the past seven months. If we add on thefts from both Piccadilly Station (30) and Piccadilly Basin (13) we reach a hefty 111. Nearly a third of all bicycle thefts in the city centre.

Inspector Richard Byatt from the North Manchester Division did give us some good news though:

“We have had massive reductions in bike theft in the city centre over the last six months with a 24% reduction in this area of crime between June and December 2013 compared to the previous six months.

"This is thanks to a clampdown on cycle thieves in the city centre. The police have also been providing cyclists with safety advice and bike marking services to ensure that recovered bikes can be returned to their rightful owner. Cycle Hubs are a safe way to park your bike in the city centre and we would always advise use off a robust lock ensuring both wheels are secured.”

So police figures mark a 24% reduction in bike thefts from the first six months of 2013 to the last six months. Good. But we don't have access to those first six months figures. What we can see though is an increase of 55% from the beginning of September to the end of November 2013. Let's hope that's a blip not a trend.

Manchester City Centre bike thefts 2013

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And then there were two