Where do bikes get stolen?

Reported bike thefts near the middle of Cambridge over the last three months, from the police's own data — plus the covered cycle parks, what actually stops a theft here, and what to do the day yours is gone.

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Town Tools builds free, public tools for Cambridge and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.

Where reports cluster

Showing the 60 busiest of 85 reported locations, so the map stays quick on a phone.Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors, via OpenFreeMap.

Location (anonymized)	Reports
On or near Further/higher Educational Building	36
On or near Parking Area	25
On or near Post Office Terrace	12
On or near Supermarket	11
On or near Shopping Area	7
On or near Queen Anne Terrace	6
On or near Theatre/concert Hall	6
On or near Fair Court	5
On or near Bradmore Street	4
On or near Gonville Place	4
On or near Mortimer Road	4
On or near Station Place	4

What helps

Use two locks of different types — a Sold Secure Gold D-lock plus a second lock — so one tool can't take the whole bike.

Lock the frame and a wheel to a fixed stand, as tightly as you can. A lock with room to swing is a lock with room to lever.

Point the keyhole downwards, and don't leave the lock resting on the ground.

Park where it is busy, lit and overlooked, or in one of the covered cycle parks below — not a quiet side street or an alley.

Take lights, bags, pumps and anything quick-release with you.

Register the frame number free on BikeRegister, and photograph the bike. The police use it to return recovered bikes, and Cambridgeshire police run free bike-marking sessions around the city.

Write the frame number down now — it is usually stamped under the bottom bracket, between the pedals. Without it a recovered bike can't be matched to you.

Local notes

Why the locations read so strangely

Police street-level data is anonymised by law, and in Cambridge that produces category labels more often than street names. Much of the list reads 'Further/higher Educational Building' — how a college, faculty or university site gets recorded — alongside 'Parking Area', 'Supermarket' and 'Shopping Area'. Where a real street name does appear, it is still an approximate point near that street and never an address. Read the labels as 'this kind of place, roughly here', not as a map of particular racks.

The covered, camera-watched places to leave a bike

CyclePoint at the railway station is the largest cycle park in Britain — 2,850 spaces over three floors, free, covered and on CCTV. In the centre there is Grand Arcade (about 200 spaces, covered and on camera, entrance on Corn Exchange Street, roughly 7am to 11.30pm), Park Street (260-plus covered spaces), and Queen Anne Terrace by Kelsey Kerridge, which has indoor spaces plus access-controlled bays. None of them is theft-proof — thefts are reported at the station too — but a covered, overlooked, camera-covered rack is a much worse bet for a thief than a lamppost.

It has actually been getting better

Cambridge City Council reported in March 2026 that cycle theft across the city has fallen by about 70% since 2019, which it credits to the community safety partnership set up that year: free bike marking (1,750 bikes marked between April and December 2025), 16 CCTV cameras covering around 650 city-centre cycle spaces, upgraded parking with access control at Queen Anne Terrace, and criminal behaviour orders against repeat offenders. The counts below are what remains of a much bigger problem, not a rising one.