[name_censored_]

Only three problems with that:

Firstly, bait bikes are inevitably going to be cheap bikes. Thieves are more interested in expensive bikes - and if the expensive bikes are not only more profitable, but also safer to steal, then they're bound to step up their lock-picking and angle-grinding game.

Secondly, finding someone to organise this would be difficult. Any single organisation sufficiently large enough to do this would be bureaucratic enough to insist on the same make/model of bike (for the obvious homogeneity benefits), which would make them as obvious as an undercover Crown Vic. Conversely, any kind of grassroots or community effort would (by design) need to alert as many people as possible to the venture, including the bike thieves themselves - thus spoiling it before it even begins.

Finally, these things are chop-shopped almost the instant they get on-sold. Tearing a bike down can be done in a public park in 5 minutes flat with a pocket's worth of tools. The bike thieves can adapt a lot more easily than the sting operators.

[DanBC]

You make a couple of assumtions that are just weird.

There's no reason to assume tha bait bikes are going to be cheap bikes, nor that all bait bikes would be the same make and model.

[name_censored_]

Bait bikes of a make/model make sense in a sufficiently bureaucratic organisation because it makes purchasing, tooling and technician training a hell of lot easier. Police cars (Crown Victorias) are obvious for the benefit of a few chases/crashes, when police fleets could have been a bit more surreptitious. I don't see a large organisations doing any different in selecting a "perfect bike to steal".

I assumed cheap bikes because of Ainmats[1] ratio of 1 in 100 bikes being trap bikes. 1 in 100 in any reasonably-sized city means tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars of kit (including GPS), and anyone with that kind of scratch has someone trying to minimise expenditure. Or, why spring for a Trek Butterfly to catch a hungry junkie when a Huffy would net hundreds of the same?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818498

[schrodinger]

You make it sound like bike thieves knowing about the bait bikes would be a bad thing, when in fact that's the point. You want thieves to know about it, and be scared that any bike they make try to steal is a bait bike. They definitely couldn't be the same model, but I don't think that's as difficult as you make it sound. Isn't there a pretty successful program in San francisco starting out?

[CyberPants]

Bait-cars work fine.