Project 529™ Acquires National Bike Registry

Project 529™ Acquires National Bike Registry

National Bike Registry and 529 Garage have joined forces to fight bike theft, creating the largest and most advanced bike registry in North America.

January 31, 2017. Today, Project 529 announced the acquisition and integration of the National Bike Registry with its 529 Garage™ anti-theft bicycle service. The merger provides law enforcement, universities, cyclists and independent bicycle dealers tools to engage in the successful recovery and return of stolen bikes.

The National Bike Registry pioneered the concept of an online bicycle registration database, accessible by law enforcement agencies across North America. Since its 1984 inception, the National Bike Registry has been used by over 2,000 law enforcement agencies and has helped protect hundreds of thousands of bikes and their owners.

“We’re very happy to pass the baton to the team at Project 529 to attack the bicycle theft epidemic,” said Eddie Orton, who has sponsored the NBR effort for over 2 decades. “The passion and capabilities of the team at 529 will be able to take our work to the next level and better serve our customers and partners.”

“Bicycle theft has been an under-served problem for decades that has grown to epidemic proportions,” said J Allard, CEO of Project 529. “After losing a bike to theft 4 years ago, I was moved to build better tools for law enforcement and the cycling community to attack this problem. After combining the National Bike Registry and 529 Garage, our partners now have access to nearly 400,000 bicycle records to help combat bike theft.”

The 529 Garage is a free bicycle registration, reporting and recovery service that allows cyclists to capture detailed information about their bicycles quickly and secure the information in the cloud. If an owner’s bike goes missing, a few taps on any mobile device allows the victim to alert the local cycling community, their social networks and law enforcement agencies with real-time notifications and receive tips from the community.

“In my 25 years on the job, I’ve seized hundreds of bicycles, only to see 95% of them go to auction because we could not locate the owners,” said Rob Brunt of the Vancouver Police Department. “In its first year of deployment in Vancouver, the 529 Garage has helped us take more stolen bikes off the street, get more bikes back to owners and has made bikes a less desirable target for thieves.”

All NBR customers have been upgraded to lifetime registration status for no charge and are invited to download the app and enhance their registrations with additional details and photographs. Immediately, all registrations from the National Bike Registry will be searchable by 529 Garage and NBR law enforcement partners granting access to a database of nearly 400,000 bike records.

Registration with Project 529 is free to all cyclists and only takes 5 minutes at www.project529.com or using the Smartphone app. To maximize the chances of recovery, cyclists are encouraged to register their bikes, learn and apply proper locking techniques and report all stolen bikes to local law enforcement.

ABOUT PROJECT 529

Project 529’s vision is to cut the bike theft epidemic in North America by 50% by 2025. The 529 Garage is a cloud-based service offered to partners in the cycling industry, law enforcement and education markets to combat bicycle theft. Since 2013, the 529 Garage has provided free, 5 minute registration to all North American cyclists from their Smartphone applications and website. Project 529 is based in Seattle, WA, Vancouver, BC and Washington DC.

ABOUT NATIONAL BIKE REGISTRY

Since 1984, the National Bike Registry (NBR) has been helping identify and return stolen bikes to their rightful owners. The National Bike Registry provides an effective and easy-to-use system that allows people to register their bikes so that they can protect their investment and reduce the loss from bicycle theft. The NBR computer database is dedicated exclusively to bicycle registrations and has been free to law enforcement across North America. Over the last 3 decades, NBR has established a network of over 2,000 police departments coast-to-coast who look for the NBR label and can easily identify victims of recovered bicycles and return them successfully to their owners.

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