campus bicycle security

tywy

irlrobins wrote:

U lock is def the best. Although they can be cut with bolt cutters, the bolt cutters would need to be 3 - 4 ft long so it's hard for anyone to conceal them.

Cable locks can be snipped with small bolt cutters in one go. Ain't worth buying imho.

Ah the cable lock I have is very hard to cut with a bolt cutter because all the bolt cutter does is squish the steal it can't actually cut through it. That's why I got that particular lock.

Gavin

As mentioned above, two locks is best. A heavy chain with padlock, not a cable lock, and a ULock.

Leave the chain at the bike rack, no need to lug it with you on the bike.

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~wiki/mw/Bike_Locks

overview above.

Gav

ferdi

never had a bike stolen form ucd.

had a nice racer lifted from outside my front door at home though

Stepherunie

I took my sisters bike for college instead of my own when i moved up her as I have a very nice one myself, basically i've destroyed hers and it squeaks and te gears are wrecked since i cycled it into a lamppost on campus in september, looks like crap - it is crap so it's never been stolen despite the fact I once left it unlocked outside the library one day - the locking mechanism had frozen on my padlock.

From what i've heard it's generally weekends that the more petty thiefs strike - the teens so best have a semi decent lock when they're around.

They need to do something about security though - I park my bike down by health science and most of us just lock it to those stupid barriers that anyone could get through with very little trouble.

I'm actually amazed I still have my bike though - i discovered i'd left it in the ally at the side of my house between it and the garage for four days as I hadn't been cycling and yet it wasn't taken.

Vorsprung

Has anything like this been suggested, you set up a certain amount of fenced off areas at particular parts of campus, they'd have CCTV and to get into the you'd have to swipe your student card through a little machine. You'd only need 5 or 6 through out campus, i'm sure it wouldn't cost a ridiculous amount of money to set up.

singingstranger

The problem with this would be who pays for the CCTV... they've had a setup in the past where (I believe) there was a similar thing; you paid 20p per day or something, park in a particular spot and somebody would literally keep watch all day. Problem was that people wouldn't pay the 20p and eventually the scheme wasn't worth it anymore...

Anyway, CCTV isn't a whole lot of a deterrent because most people aren't bothered about being seen on it. What will Services or the Gardaí do if you're spotted - try and remember your face?

Vorsprung

My idea was more that one CCTV camera would cover the whole area so that if anyone tried to do anything fancy like hop over the fence, services would see them and race down. Im sure there's plenty of CCTV around the place anyway (is there? hope so!) so you could put the fences in places already covered by cameras.

irlrobins

CCTV can actaully be a good deterrant. Many bike thiefs are repeat offenders and thus easily recognisable by the Guards. I'm sure if you plotted where all bike thefts occur in UCD most occur in areas not covered by cameras.

Of course installing CCTV in an area as large as UCD would be hugely expensive.

singingstranger

Although if they were to put it in a couple of more centralised places with a swipey system it could really work... I'm going to go to some of the Union types with this actually...

irlrobins

Glenomena had this originally: a fenced off area with a lock on door that could only be opened with swipe card. But obviously some people found the hassle of swiping too much and kept propping the door wide open. Gave up trying to close it all the time.