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The Pickwick Bicycle Club<\/a> first met on 22 June 1870, a fortnight after Charles Dickens\u2019s death, at a hotel in Hackney. The club continues to function and the building still stands on the edge of Hackney Downs.<\/p>\n One evening a few years ago, walking across the park, a friend and I saw a woman lying on the path next to her bike. A group of youngsters jumped out of nowhere, she told us, knocked her off and ran away. We helped her to the nearest bench \u2013 her ankle was badly hurt \u2013 and stayed with her until a policeman arrived. He took our details but didn\u2019t sound very hopeful about catching the culprits.<\/p>\n The number of bike journeys in London<\/a> increased this year to an estimated 1.33 million a day. My current bike has been my main means of transport for the past four and a half years. Days after I bought it someone tried to drill through the D-lock but a neighbour chased them off. Various parts of it have been stolen; replacing them has cost me more than I paid for the machine in the first place.<\/p>\n \u2018Thieves are getting smarter,\u2019 a bike mechanic told me. \u2018They know what\u2019s expensive and they look for these parts.\u2019 He showed me a pair of gear shifters worth \u00a3900, which could be removed relatively easily: you just need to unscrew the stem bolt and cut through the brake cables. That\u2019s what happened to my bicycle last year (my shifters would have fetched much less than \u00a3900). The mechanic never parks his bike outside: \u2018I don\u2019t even have a lock.\u2019<\/p>\n Reasonably priced parts are increasingly hard to find (Brexit doesn\u2019t help). Someone I know recently spotted a man carrying a bike, its wheels locked together, across a road in North London. He took pictures of the man, who put on a balaclava and went over to a group waiting nearby. \u2018There were lots of cars around,\u2019 my informant said. \u2018No one intervened.\u2019 He contacted the police but never heard back.<\/p>\n Another mechanic told me that he and his colleagues check the BikeRegister<\/a> database when they think a bike brought to them might have been stolen. The red flags include mismatched parts, such as an expensive frame with cheap handlebars. Several bicycles have been returned to their owners this way.<\/p>\n One person I spoke to told me that his cargo bike was stolen from a \u2018secure\u2019 storage space below his apartment. While he is \u2018privileged enough\u2019 to be able to replace it, he said, cycling should be affordable for everyone. \u2018Londoners are still much more likely to cycle if they are white, male, non-disabled, younger, from higher income households or live closer to central London,\u2019 according to the latest communication from the London Cycling Campaign<\/a>. The campaigners are calling on the mayor and councils to \u2018make a bike available to every Londoner\u2019 in 2025.<\/p>\n I locked my bike outside Euston Tower before going to see 20,000<\/em><\/a> by Cameron Griffin, an installation whose title refers to the average number of bikes reported stolen in London every year. Griffin used a selection of distorted locks, as well as his own bicycle, attached to a tall metal structure with a light at the top. Researching the project, he photographed mangled bicycles and collected statements from people who\u2019d had theirs stolen. They spoke of feeling \u2018heartbroken\u2019, \u2018angry and upset\u2019, \u2018saddened and shocked\u2019. (After visiting the exhibition I found my bike intact where I\u2019d left it.)<\/p>\n Losing your bike in London is not the end of the world; having a cycling accident can be. While the number of road fatalities in the city has been decreasing<\/a>, individual deaths \u2013 six cyclists this year \u2013 cannot be subsumed in statistics. In September 2023 Harry Webb and Gao Gao were killed in Hackney within days of each other. Transport for London aims<\/a> to eliminate deaths and serious injuries by 2041. New standards for lorries, which are involved in half of cycling fatalities in London, were introduced<\/a> in October to improve visibility.<\/p>\n The LCC maintains a map<\/a> of the capital\u2019s twenty most dangerous junctions. Pembury Circus in Hackney doesn\u2019t make the list though it\u2019s notorious among local cyclists. The council has come up with what Hackney Cycling Campaign calls a \u2018dangerous redesign\u2019<\/a>. The campaigners\u2019 own proposal<\/a>, supported by Webb\u2019s parents, was rejected. Garmon ap Garth, the campaign co-ordinator, said the approved design \u2018prioritises aesthetics over safety\u2019. Rob Coates, who worked on the alternative proposal, described the council\u2019s argument that \u2018they need to maximise the \u201cplacemaking\u201d at a junction which will carry over ten thousand vehicles per day\u2019 as \u2018ludicrous\u2019.<\/p>\n A London policeman is unlikely to ask: \u2018Is it about a bicycle?\u2019<\/a> One Met officer told me they take bike theft seriously but admitted that most such crimes go unsolved. They sometimes stop people with bikes that appear \u2018too expensive\u2019, she said (in other words, people who appear \u2018too poor\u2019), and visit shops that \u2018look dodgy\u2019, though there isn\u2019t much you can prove about a secondhand bike.<\/p>\n At a webinar last month, Mike Daly of the Met\u2019s Cycle Safety Team referred to a survey<\/a> conducted among women cyclists in London. More than 90 per cent of respondents have been abused by other road users. Daly encouraged everyone to report any incidents to help the police \u2018identify hotspots\u2019 and reallocate resources.<\/p>\n