Bike Theft by the Numbers: Which US Cities Are Worst and Why

TL;DR;

• Recent research estimates about 2.4 million adult bicycles are stolen every year in the US, with an annual loss around $1.4 billion.Agarwal et al. 2025
• FBI data shows only ~150,000 thefts get reported annually—maybe 5–10% of the real total—and fewer than 1 in 10 stolen bikes are recovered in many cities.JOIN 2025, Sundays Insurance 2025, Best Bike Lock 2024, Houston Chronicle 2025
• California, Texas, Colorado, Florida, and New York account for a huge share of reported thefts; big, bike-rich metros like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Denver, Cambridge, and Austin repeatedly show up on “worst cities” lists.JOIN 2025, Velco 2024, Kryptonite via Best Bike Lock
• Theft hits equity-seeking riders harder: Black, Native American, Asian, and multiracial cyclists report higher theft rates, and most thefts actually happen at or near home, not just at sketchy racks downtown.Agarwal et al. 2025, Bike Index 2025 report
• Cities that embrace bike registration (Project 529, Bike Index) and secure parking have cut theft by 30–60% in some cases.Bicycle Retailer 2024
• For individual riders, the data is clear: good locks, smart parking, and locking at home matter more than most people think. Securing “easy-grab” accessories—including your Loud Mini horn—with security hardware or taking them with you (quick-release thumbscrew) dramatically cuts opportunistic theft.Best Bike Lock 2024, Loud Mini product page

“Bike theft is not just about bikes: it undermines efforts to increase bicycling.”
— Agarwal et al., Bicycle Theft in the US: Magnitude and Equity Impacts (2025)

Bike theft feels like rain: annoying but inevitable. You lock up, cross your fingers, and hope your bike is still there after coffee.

But when you actually look at the numbers, it isn’t just “bad everywhere.” A small cluster of states and cities accounts for a wildly disproportionate share of theft, and the reasons are structural: high riding rates, high-value bikes, fragile registration systems, and thriving resale markets.

This piece walks through the scale of the problem, which places are worst, why they’re that way, and what both cities and individual riders can do differently—including how to keep high-value accessories like a Loud Mini horn from walking off.

How big is the US bike-theft problem, really?

Until very recently, even researchers were guessing. That changed with a 2025 paper, Bicycle Theft in the US: Magnitude and Equity Impacts.Agarwal et al. 2025

They combined a nationally representative survey with import data and found:

• About 2.4 million adult bicycles are stolen each year in the US.
• That’s ~710 thefts per 100,000 people per year.
• The annual value of those stolen bikes is roughly $1.4 billion.

Crucially, they also confirmed what riders already suspect:

• The annual bicycle-theft rate is 3.1% for all adults, but 4.2% for active cyclists—if you ride and park your bike out in the world, the odds go up.Agarwal et al. 2025

Meanwhile, on the official side, the FBI’s crime database shows only about 150,000 bikes reported stolen in 2023, with a total loss value around $148 million** and an average reported bike value of **$833.76.JOIN 2025, Sundays Insurance 2025

That means only something like 5–10% of thefts ever hit police stats—a figure echoed by Project 529’s CEO and independent surveys.Bicycle Retailer 2024, Best Bike Lock 2024

A few more sobering data points:

• A 2024 synthesis of FBI data and surveys estimated 175,200 bikes reported stolen per year in the US—but actual thefts likely run into the low millions.Best Bike Lock 2024, GovTech 2023
• In one large survey, 54% of victims never reported the theft to police, and 88% never saw their bike again.Best Bike Lock 2024
• In Houston, fewer than 1 in 10 stolen bikes are recovered, despite more than 10,000 theft reports since 2019; only 335 arrests were made in that period.Houston Chronicle 2025

So when someone says “everybody gets a bike stolen eventually,” that’s not folk wisdom—that’s close to the actual statistics.

Where is bike theft worst? The state-level picture

One of the cleanest recent looks at geography comes from JOIN, a cycling app that analyzed FBI 2023 bike-theft data by state.JOIN 2025

They found:

• Nearly 150,000 bikes were reported lost or stolen across the US in 2023.
• These thefts were worth over $148 million**, with an average bike value of **$833.76.
• California and Texas alone accounted for more than 22% of all reported thefts.

Here’s a snapshot of the states with the highest number of reported thefts:

Table 1. States with the most reported bike thefts (FBI 2023, via JOIN)

States like Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Illinois, and Massachusetts also sit high on the list by raw numbers.JOIN 2025

If you prefer to think in terms of money: California contributes over 21% of total stolen-bike value, with Colorado, Texas, Washington, and Oregon also punching above their weight.JOIN 2025

The city-level story: where bikes vanish fastest

State data hides a lot of local nuance. But when you zoom in on cities—using registration platforms, lock-company stats, and media analyses—a familiar cast of characters pops up again and again.

A few examples:

• A long-running Kryptonite “Top 10 Worst Cities for Bike Theft” list (based on sales and internal data) repeatedly featured New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Denver, Portland, Cambridge (MA), Austin, Philadelphia, and New Haven.Bicycle Retailer 2008, Campfire Cycling 2008, Best Bike Lock 2024
• A 2024 Velco brief, drawing on Project 529 data, highlights New York, San Francisco, and Chicago as especially hard-hit, partly because bikes are widely used for delivery and courier work.Velco 2024
• College-heavy cities are notorious for theft. Police guidance from La Porte, Texas, bluntly notes that “a large percentage of bicycle theft takes place in cities where there are colleges and universities.”La Porte PD

More recent academic work backs this up. A 2023–2025 series of studies looking at patterns in North American bike theft and recovery found that theft intensity strongly correlates with:

• Dense, mixed-use urban cores with lots of on-street parking
• High mode share (lots of people biking)
• High concentrations of expensive bikes, especially e-bikes and performance machinesPatterns in Bike Theft and Recovery 2023, Cycling Industry News 2019

In other words, the “worst cities” aren’t random—they’re places where bikes are valuable, visible, and often locked outside under pressure from tight housing, limited storage, and patchy infrastructure.

Why some places are so much worse: structure, not just “bad neighborhoods”

Looking across the data, the same ingredients keep showing up in high-theft places.

1. Lots of riding + lots of expensive bikes

• Big coastal metros (NYC, SF, Seattle), mountain-bike hubs (parts of Colorado), and dense college towns (Cambridge, Portland, Austin) combine high bike use with high average bike value.JOIN 2025, Velco 2024
• The JOIN analysis found that Colorado’s reported stolen bikes had the highest average value in the nation (~$1,937), and California’s stolen bikes represented over 21% of national stolen-bike value.JOIN 2025

For thieves, that’s a perfect storm: lots of unlocked or poorly locked inventory, with a high ceiling on resale value.

2. Easy resale and weak identifiers

Unlike cars, bikes don’t have visible VIN plates or standardized registration:

• A government technology brief notes that up to 20 million bikes are sold annually in the US, with perhaps 2 million stolen, but very few carry any kind of traceable registration.GovTech 2023
• In one large survey of theft victims, 77% didn’t have a record of the bike’s frame number, making it nearly impossible for police to prove ownership even when they do find a suspicious bike.Best Bike Lock 2024

A separate study of recovery patterns in North America found that 27% of recovered stolen bikes were being sold online, often on mainstream platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji.Cohen 2023

If a thief can strip your bike of identifying info and flip it online for even 5–10% of retail value, it’s worth the risk—especially when enforcement is weak.La Porte PD

3. Under-resourced enforcement and under-reporting

Bike theft is a classic “low-priority” crime:

• Houston data: over 10,000 bike thefts reported, only 335 arrests in six years, with recovery rates under 10%.Houston Chronicle 2025
• Bike Index’s US survey found 54% of victims never reported the theft at all, and even among those who did, there was no difference in recovery rates compared to those who didn’t report.Best Bike Lock 2024

Project 529’s CEO estimates that only 5–10% of thefts are reported to police, and FBI figures from 2019–2023 show reported thefts fluctuating around 110k–155k per year—tiny compared with the 2.4 million estimated by independent research.Bicycle Retailer 2024, Agarwal et al. 2025

It’s a feedback loop: low recovery → low reporting → low priority → low recovery.

4. Fragile everyday security

The weakest link is often… the lock (or lack thereof):

• In one multi-country survey of thousands of bike-theft victims, 38% hadn’t locked their bike at all, and another 33% were using a basic cable lock.Best Bike Lock 2024
• Only a small minority used high-security U-locks or chains with any recognized security rating.

Component theft is even easier:

• Among riders who’ve had parts stolen, 40% lost wheels, 16% lost seats, and ~15% lost lights—the classic quick-release bits.Best Bike Lock 2024

Anything that unbolts quickly or uses a thumb lever (wheels, seatpost, lights, horn mounts) is a prime target unless you either secure it or take it with you.

Who pays the price? Equity impacts and “hidden” losses

The new US-wide work by Agarwal and co-authors looked explicitly at who is most likely to lose a bike to theft.Agarwal et al. 2025

Key findings:

• Active bicyclists have higher theft rates than the general population (4.2% vs 3.1%).
• Within that, people who self-identify as Black, Native American, Asian, or multiracial report higher theft rates than White riders.
• Theft is not just a “downtown rack” problem: about 59% of thefts in the active-cyclist subsample occurred in residential zones, and 44% of thefts were from yards, balconies, porches, or patios.

Combine that with other studies on ridership and theft:

• A 2024 paper on the impact of theft found that roughly half of victims reduce or stop cycling, at least for a while, especially when they can’t afford an immediate replacement.Cohen 2024

Put together, bike theft is:

• Regressive: it falls hardest on people with fewer resources to replace a bike.
• Anti-mode-shift: it pushes people off bikes and back into cars or off transit.
• Undercounted: the official stats miss both the scale and the equity dimension.

If you care about Vision Zero, climate targets, or just making it normal to bike, bike theft is not a side issue—it’s core infrastructure.

What cities that are turning the corner are doing differently

The good news: when cities treat bike theft as a systems problem, the numbers move.

A few case-study style insights from Project 529’s work with cities and police departments:

• In cities where 529 Garage registration is widely adopted and integrated into police practice, local departments have reported substantial reductions in theft over time.
• Denver police report that bike theft is down almost 30% compared with the year before active 529 collaboration.Bicycle Retailer 2024
• Vancouver, B.C. saw bike theft drop around 60% after integrating registration and enforcement since 2015.Bicycle Retailer 2024

Common ingredients in those “success stories”:

1. Default registration

• Police, shops, schools, and advocacy groups all push riders to register bikes with Bike Index or Project 529, often right at point of sale.Bike Index, Project 529
• Shops use integrated tools (like Hubtiger + 529) to check serials automatically when a bike comes in for service, catching stolen bikes that surface months later.Bicycle Retailer 2024

2. Real secure parking, not just a couple of “token” racks

• Lockers and card-access bike rooms at transit hubs.
• Well-lit, highly visible staple racks near entrances—not hidden down dark alleys.
• Design standards that avoid flimsy or easily cut fixtures.

3. Clear guidance and enforcement

• Public campaigns showing exactly how to lock a bike (frame + wheel to fixed object with a U-lock/chain).
• Periodic targeted enforcement in known hot spots (including stings on chronic chop-shop locations).
• Cooperation with online marketplaces to take down repeat offenders.

These changes don’t magically turn a “worst city” into Copenhagen, but they shrink the pool of easy wins for thieves and raise recovery rates enough that word gets around.

What this means for your bike (and your horn) right now

Policy is slow. Your next ride is… today. Here’s what the data suggests you should do immediately.

1. Lock like you’re in one of the worst cities, even if you aren’t

Based on FBI numbers, Bike Index data, and victim surveys, the safe default is:

• Use a good U-lock or heavy chain with an independently tested rating (e.g., Sold Secure or ART).Best Bike Lock 2024
• Always lock frame + at least one wheel to a fixed object.
• Keep the lock off the ground and filling as much of the shackle as possible (less room for tools).
• In high-risk areas, two different locks (e.g., U-lock + chain, or U-lock + cable for the second wheel) make your bike less attractive than the one next to it.

2. Treat home as a high-risk location

Multiple sources emphasize that more than half of thefts happen at or near home—garages, yards, porches, apartment basements.Agarwal et al. 2025, Bike Index 2025 report, Velco 2024

So:

• Lock the bike indoors if it’s in a shared space.
• Don’t leave bikes loose on porches, balconies, or in open garages.
• If you must keep a bike outside overnight, treat it like a downtown rack: serious locks, wheels secured, nothing easily removable left on it.

3. Make recovery possible before anything is stolen

The difference between “definitely gone” and “maybe recoverable” is what you do now:

• Record your serial number (photo + text).
• Take photos of the bike from multiple angles.
• Register with a free database like Bike Index or Project 529.
• Consider a GPS tracker hidden in the frame or accessories (especially for e-bikes).Velco 2024

When theft happens, that’s the difference between “police can’t prove it’s yours” and “here’s the serial, here’s the registry entry, let’s get my bike back.”

4. Secure the “easy-grab” parts—lights, wheels, and horns

Component theft is its own mini-crimewave: wheels, seats, and lights make up over 70% of reported stolen components, and quick-release hardware is massively over-represented.Best Bike Lock 2024

That logic applies to horns too:

• If your horn looks valuable and pops off with a single thumb lever, it’s an easy target—even if the thief leaves the frame behind.
• The safest pattern is either:
  • Replace quick-release hardware with security hardware, or
  • Use quick-release intentionally so you can take the accessory with you.

The Loud Mini horn is a nice example of designing for both options:

• Its mount has an easy-release mechanism so you can run it with a quick-release thumbscrew: pop the horn off in a second and drop it in your bag when you park somewhere sketchy.
• There’s also a security screw / security bolts option that replaces standard hardware with tamper-resistant fasteners. That makes it much harder for a casual thief to remove the horn or mount without tools, while still letting you take the whole mount off at home when you want to move it to another bike.Loud Mini product page (See our article on car-style horns for more on why these accessories are worth protecting.)

The data on component theft basically screams: don’t leave shiny, quick-release parts on an unattended bike. Using security hardware on things like your horn, seatpost, and wheels is one of the cheapest ways to tilt the odds in your favor.

The bigger takeaway: theft isn’t random, and it’s fixable

The new wave of US research on bicycle theft changes the conversation:

• We now know it’s millions of bikes per year, not “some unknown number.”
• We know the losses are measured in billions, and the equity harms are real, especially for riders who rely on bikes for everyday mobility.
• We know the worst hot spots: States like California, Texas, Colorado, Florida, New York, and bike-dense cities like NYC, SF, Chicago, Portland, Denver, Cambridge, Austin, and Philly.
• And we have proof that systemic changes—registration, secure parking, better enforcement—cut theft dramatically in places that actually try.

For individual riders, that means:

• Assume the risk is higher than the official numbers suggest.
• Lock like a thief is watching, especially at home.
• Make your bike and your accessories either too annoying to steal or too easy to identify.

If cities do their part with registration, parking, and enforcement—and riders do theirs with locks, documentation, and smart hardware choices—“everybody gets their bike stolen eventually” doesn’t have to stay true.

References

• Agarwal, S., Fitch-Polse, D., Nelson, T., & Herr, S. (2025). Bicycle Theft in the US: Magnitude and Equity Impacts. Findings.
• JOIN (2025). Bike theft by state: Latest FBI data analyzed. JOIN Cycling Tips.
• Read, Y. (2025). Grand theft bicycle: The top-5 states bike theft stats and recovery insights. Sundays Insurance.
• Ellis, C. (2024). Bike Theft Statistics in the US. The Best Bike Lock.
• Velco (2024). Bicycle theft statistics in the USA and how to prevent it. Velco.
• Ferroni, L. (2024). Quotes in: Yobbi, D. Collaboration’s aim: Reduce bike theft, aid recovery. Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
• Houston Chronicle (2025). Most stolen bikes in Houston aren’t recovered. Here’s how you can help change that. Houston Chronicle.
• GovTech (2023). Can Bike Registries Help Police Solve More Thefts? Government Technology.
• Cohen, A. (2023). Patterns in Bike Theft and Recovery. Findings and PDF via eScholarship.
• Cohen, A. (2024). The impact of bicycle theft on ridership behavior. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation.
• La Porte Police Department. Bicycle Security Tips. City of La Porte, TX.
• Cycling Industry News (2019). Bicycle theft surpasses 2 million a year in the USA. CyclingIndustry.News.
• Bike Index (2025). Bike Index’s 2025 Annual Bike Theft Report. PDF via Bicycle Retailer.
• Loud Bicycle (product page). Loud Mini horn. LoudBicycle.com.
• Project 529. Bike theft is on the rise – don’t be a victim. Project 529.
• Bike Index. Bike registration that works. BikeIndex.org.