Arkadiusz Broniarz’s purpose of pedaling 800 kilometers in August.
It wasn’t a fitness challenge. He was doing this to the SickKids Foundation as a component of his Great Cycle Challenge.
But the quest for Broniarz suffered an unexpected blow this weekend after the 36-year-old motorcycle was stolen from central London.
My motorcycle is “anything that’s so important to me every day,” he says. “It’s a shame that it also happened at a time when I’m looking to do something for the kids.”
London police said the overall trend of motorcycle theft in the city, adding that this year, has fallen from five years ago, despite a significant increase in the number of cyclists noticed in 2020.
But it’s a little consolation for Broniarz, who still sees motorcycle theft as a widespread challenge in the city, especially in the city center.
Broniarz said the incident led him to go into debt and pass the painful procedure of locating a new motorcycle when the COVID-19 pandemic propelled cycling in London to levels never before noticed.
“All the shops are almost sold out,” he said. “In essence, all the workshops said, “You may not get a motorcycle until next year.”
“I ended up picking up anything that didn’t even suit me.”
In 2019, 765 motorcycles were reported to be stolen from London police, which this year partnered with 529 Garage, North America’s largest online motorcycle registry, to launch a new registration program in the city. So this year there have been 376 bike thefts reported.
The program connects cyclists from all over the city, allows them to register on their motorcycles and upload photos, serial number, logo and style and other data in an application.
When a motorcycle is stolen or lost, users can alert the cycling network to a particular geographic domain of the application. Police also receive alerts and have access to the database, so investigators can compare recovered motorcycles with those reported as stolen through the registry.
Const. Carl Noel, of the London Police Crime Prevention Unit, said the search helped police and returned stolen bikes, but adoption was less than expected.
Since its launch in May, 536 have signed up for the program. This does not come with other people who would possibly have registered their motorcycles directly in the app and not with the registration site created through the police.
Noel partly attributed the low adoption rate to the VOCD-19 pandemic, which limited the ability of the police to advertise registration over the network on occasions when officials can sign others on their bikes.
“The police station was unable to advertise the registration the same way we expected before the virus,” he said, adding that the more people join, the better the formula will work.
“It’s a community-driven system,” Noel said. “If we have 1,000 motorcycles registered to 100, we’re 10 times more likely to locate this bike.”
As for Broniarz, he said he was still determined to succeed in his 800km goal.
“This race means everything to me, and I don’t want to give up that goal,” he said. “I want to achieve that.”
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