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Initiatives such as Project 529 have led to what looks like the fourth year in a row of declining bike thefts in Vancouver, according to statistics from the Vancouver Police Department.

Data compiled by police show that there were 3,131 thefts city-wide in 2015. That dropped to 2,655 in 2016, and 2,199 in 2017.

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This year, there have been 1,200 bike thefts between Jan. 1 and July 31. That is a drop of six thefts from the same period last year.

Project 529 is a bike registration and recovery program started two years ago in Vancouver.

Const. Rob Brunt spearheaded bringing Project 529 to Vancouver after looking for bike recovery apps. He was contacted by J. Allard, creator of the program known as 529 Garage in the U.S.

“We have maintained these great results while reaching out to our ‘bike theft’ victims requesting that they make a VPD report as well,” Brunt said by email. “We initially were only seeing three out of 10 ‘victims’ make a report. We now are in the six to seven out of 10 area.”