S&S,
Re tracking,
http://www.google.com/m?q=bicycle+trip+gps+tracking
Brings up some ideas. One guy at the bike store was showing me route options using his personal heat map on mapmyride I think.
Also consider
http://www.bikecounts.luskin.ucla.edu/
And
http://www.vtpi.org/documents/walking.php
Though the last two don't appear to involve gps they should give you an idea how low tech tracking has been done.
I want to thank Soha for managing to organize us somehow and delegate tasks. And for cutting short some of my skepticism about working through gov't to get certain things done.
She and others could bring a different mindset that could make things happen that I wouldn't begin to consider trying.
To continue my song however,
I like your four level proposal. I think however it would be more appropriate as a proposal for grant funding for a project that a non profit would implement, or that someone already working within the city or the state would implement with grant funding, As opposed to a program we would write and pass a law to implement.
I think we need to figure out what if any law we need passed or repealed and keep that request as simple as possible.
I'm recommending making registration optional and free and an activity of nonprofits or benefit corporations. But then how the police would be involved in bike impounding, recovery, and auctioning I'm not as sure. . . Perhaps it's not that complicated though.
Some people on the street who get bikes without yellow stamps taken by police suggest the system is a racket run for the benefit of the police. I hope that is just the resentment talking. But there is a lot of pent up resentment due to the way the enforcement of the current system has been carried out. A story I got tonight suggested that some people will even refuse to fill out the mandatory registration paperwork when buying a new bike from Wal-Mart. The homeless who want to keep their bicycles on the other hand put a lot of effort into getting that yellow stamp. Judging from bike racks on UH it seems many college students don't bother.
Returning to your ideas however, I once had a 6 month membership at the city recreation center in Monterey, CA, where by signing up for a community college course that cost $200, I got a dollar back every time I checked into the rec center. So you could earn back all but $20 of the $200 paid. I doubt a law had to be passed to make that possible but someone figured out how to manage the funding and payments.
Conceivably someone could set up a carbon offset company to fund our projects.
----
I'll attach the proposal I'm attempting to write up in several formats. I'm somewhat hampered or helped by having to use library computers without internet. So I've made up facts and noted that they need to be checked. Or fabricated. . .
The last parts of the proposal, having to do with theft prevention, bike recovery, impounded bike auction, and so on is the least developed and least clear in my mind.
As you know my main goal is ending the tax and police impoundment of homeless people's bikes. But it does seem possible that a non-profit-run 100 percent registration campaign based on bikeindex.org could be successful.
[I don't forget Yamato's point that whatever we get enshrined in city procedure could be a longer-term, more stable solution. But we're dealing now with the effects of archaic law, procedures, and technology with the current registration scenario. I really don't think the city should be managing this system, but perhaps that's because I'm an outsider and I haven't met the city staff who are gung ho to help us with this.]
However, what about people who don't even have an email address. . . ? bikeindex.org has that figured out? They do have local bike stores be the registration points for bicycles. But none yet in HI as I remember. I guess I have more research to do.
It probably wouldn't hurt to start working with bike stores and the police community liaison now to start trying to figure out how this transition could work for everyone.
The status quo does not seem to be unbearable however and after some painful lessons both the homeless and those who've had expensive bikes stolen may manage to adapt to the situation in Hawaii. But it does discourage cycling and make bicycle ownership and use more a source of anxiety that they would ideally be.
Colin
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<BikeRegistrationImprovement.txt><BikeRegistrationImprovement.docx><BikeRegistrationImprovement.odt><BikeRegistrationImprovement.rtf>
"Since Portland has a big problem with chop shops and people stealing their bikes and taking them down to the river and taking them apart, if police had more power to go in there and scan the serial number and find that number to return the bike, I'd be totally up for it," he said.
Portland Police will talk more about how they'll use the technology when they formally announce the new Bike Theft Task Force on March 31st.
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