VANCOUVER -- One miserable Saturday in November, Caio Malouf biked to his job at Taco Del Mar in Harbour Centre. As usual, he locked his bike to a rack outside the mall door.

It was still there at 4 p.m., but when he left work half an hour later, it was gone.

The theft was doubly disappointing because the bike was a gift from his girlfriend. It lasted about a month.

“My girlfriend upgraded my bike and the u-lock I had for my old bike didn’t really fit the new one,” Malouf says. He took a chance with a less robust lock and chain.

A mall video camera recorded the theft and after watching it, Malouf ventured to some sketchier bits of the Downtown Eastside on the off chance he might spot the thief.

“I went to Hastings and saw many people selling nice bikes. But not my bike.”

Malouf gave up and bought a clunker from a friend. If he loses it, it won’t bother him much.

A snapshot of Malouf’s story and hundreds like it are catalogued on online bike theft reporting websites. Malouf logged his on Facebook’s Stolen Bikes Vancouver page, which allows you to post a photo of your lost wheels and some information about where and how the theft occurred.

VanCity Bike Watch also aggregates theft reports and pinpoints the addresses on an interactive map. In some parts of Vancouver — Gastown, Chinatown and downtown — the individual pointers are so thick they present as a solid mass.

This raises a question. Why, in a city that crows about its bike culture, are there so few secure parking areas for bikes?

Bike theft is an epidemic in our city. Police have received close to 3,000 stolen bike reports this year in Vancouver alone, no doubt a fraction of the real numbers. North Shore numbers are up as well, particularly in Lonsdale where thieves snatch bikes and flee via SeaBus.

Police are doing what they can, with bike tracking to help owners recover their stolen steeds and bait bikes to snare some thieves.

But all of these are reactive programs that kick in post-theft.

What is really needed to stop bike theft is prevention, and what is missing is secure public parking.

Many office buildings have bike lockers but they are for employees only. Cyclists who want to ride to shopping malls, cinemas, bars and restaurants are forced to lock up at an outdoor rack.

The odds of surviving a night out? Slim.

Other cities are way ahead on this front.

Amsterdam has had supervised bike garages for decades. One swish bike garage in Palo Alto offers supervised parking plus an on-site repair service. Even Toronto, hardly a bicycle paradise, buried under snow and ice all winter, has lockers or supervised garages at about 20 locations including city hall, transit stations, with more in the works.

In Vancouver, we have exactly one secure public parking station, provided by TransLink at the Main Street SkyTrain station. There are also lockers at a handful of other TransLink station across Metro.

Cycling advocacy groups like HUB have lobbied the city for better services, said HUB’s executive director Erin O’Melinn.

“We’re talking … and they’d like to see something happen. But we haven’t seen any plans.”

On the Metro front, O’Melinn says it isn’t clear if bike parking will be built in Coquitlam at the end of the Evergreen Line. “We’d love to see it, but we’re not sure it will happen.”

Some major development projects in Vancouver are being forced to set aside space for future bike-share stations, a Vision Vancouver pet project that has faltered under restrictive helmet laws and multiple false starts. Why not mandate the provision of secure public parking instead?

Bike thieves are thwarting a lot of good effort to get people riding. All the separated lanes in the world won’t persuade people to ditch their cars if there is no safe resting spot for a bike.

atanner@vancouversun.com

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