It was a ritual for generations of young bicyclists. Soon after plucking the bow off that gleaming new Schwinn, they’d pedal on over to the fire station to have it officially licensed, assuring a chance of recovering their bike if it were stolen.

No more. San Jose on Tuesday is about to join a growing list of cities that are abandoning bicycle licensing.

San Jose has required bike registration since 1974. But a city audit earlier this year found the mandate is seldom observed today. The program doesn’t make enough in fees to cover the cost for busy cops and firefighters to create and maintain a useful license database.

“I think the last time I licensed my bike was third grade,” said Councilman Sam Liccardo, an avid cyclist. “Given the fact that nobody seems to know much about the license requirement, it made sense to get rid of it.”

The City Council on Tuesday is expected to repeal the bicycle license requirement from the municipal code, a move recommended in the February audit that said the provision should either be enforced or dropped.

The audit suggested the cost of the city’s license fee wasn’t the problem: A new, one-year license cost just $2 and a three-year renewal only $3.

But with an estimated 22,000 bicycles sold each year in San Jose, the city in the 2008-2009 budget year collected just $636 in bike license fees. The auditors surveyed two fire stations, where the licenses are distributed, and found that only nine licenses had been issued that year.

Neither station kept a locked cash box to store the fee receipts, the audit found. And although police were supposed to establish a license database where the information could be accessed to aid in recovering stolen bikes, they had not done so, telling the auditors they were too short-staffed.

Other cities have had similar experiences. Los Angeles abandoned its bicycle licensing program last year.

Michelle Mowery, senior bicycle coordinator with the LA Department of Transportation, said fee revenue there was insufficient to keep a readily accessible database that would be useful in recovering bicycles.

San Francisco once had a voluntary program that has been deactivated. Seattle’s program has been inactive since the 1980s.

In California, the DMV provides licenses, renewal stickers and registration forms to cities that request them for a bicycle licensing program. But the state vehicle code limits the fees cities can charge bicyclists to $4 a year for a new license and $2 a year for renewal.

But Mowery said many bicyclists simply photograph, engrave or stuff identifying information in a bike’s tubing to help them reclaim it as stolen property, making the license seem a redundant hassle.

Matt Divita, who works at the iMiNUSD bike shop near San Jose State University, said none of his customers have ever asked him about registering their bikes — and he hasn’t registered his, either.

David Sanchez, 17, an Oak Grove High School student who was buying a Leader bike at the store, said he had never heard of licensing a bicycle and had a better strategy for keeping his safe.

“I’ll just keep it around me,” Sanchez said.

Contact John Woolfolk at 408-975-9346.