Bicycle Light Theft & Bicycle Parking Infrastructure

Yesterday morning I was up in San Francisco for an ABAG (Association of
Bay Area Governments) meeting as part of my city council duties. The
main topics, as always, were housing and transportation. There is this
dream by many that if only we build high-density housing very close to
major employers, that the employees will choose to live there and ride a
bicycle to work, solving the traffic problems without building any
transit or roads. LOL.

One representative brought up the issue of safe bicycle parking and said
that in many place if you leave your lights, or other accessories, on
your bicycle, parked outside, if the whole bicycle isn't stolen your
lights are certain to be gone.

I think that security is one issue people won't even bicycle to a local
store. I know that when my daughter went to UC Santa Cruz and parked her
bicycle in town, she'd come out and pieces were gone. Odd pieces like
half of a mirror. Someone walking around with an Allen wrench stealing
halves of Mirrycles?!

Personally I always remove my headlight when going into a building, but
the tail light would be difficult to remove every time unless it's
attached to a piece of rear luggage.

I took Caltrain up to San Francisco (the "Baby Bullet" ha-ha). Since the
trains are now extremely crowded, and bicycle space is limited, I took a
Brompton on the train, which fits neatly into a space in the bike cars,
and rode to the meeting which was only about a mile from the train
station. A Brompton is not well suited for San Francisco's awful
streets. But with the Brompton, I just folded it up and took it into the
meeting room. The return ride on Caltrain was in the middle of the day
on an agonizingly slow train that makes every single stop.