When I was a child, I was shown a metal plate that was stamped or imprinted with numbers that one or both of my parents claimed was a “license plate” that they had to have on their bicycle when they lived in New Jersey. I don’t remember if they said if it was required under State Law or if it was only a local thing e.g. with the Town or Township.
Are there any jurisdictions in the US where bicycles must be registered, even if they do not need to display license plates? Living in Virginia, I’ve never heard of such a requirement and when my parents got me a bicycle, there was never any talk about taking it down to the DMV or wherever and getting a license plate or plates.
Were my parents pulling my leg, or was there mandatory bicycle registration in New Jersey (or part of New Jersey) at one time?
I grew up in NY State and in the mid-seventies there was a push for bike registrations. Don’t remember any ‘plate’ for it, just a sticker. As a kid I thought it was neat but my parents never bothered. Thinking about it now, knowing NY, it was probably little more than a state govt money making scheme (i.e. a ‘bicycle tax’)…
The town I grew up in on Long Island (NY) offered bike registration, with a plate and sticker, back in the 1960’s. I don’t think it was required, though.
The current town I live in (also on the Island) offers to register your bike with the local PD to help in identifying it in case of theft.
The town I live in (pop. ~10,000) requires bikes be registered. It’s a one-time fee of something like $10. I’m pretty sure 90% of the bikes are unregistered, and I think the punishment for having an unregistered bike is maybe a $25 fine that includes registration. The only situation in which it seems to be enforced is when someone is found to be riding under the influence of alcohol (which is illegal here too, not sure if it’s a municipal or state law).
When I lived in Wichita in the early 80s, not only were bicycles required to be registered, the fine for riding an unregistered bike on the streets was higher than the fine for driving a car with expired tags. The Eagle usually ran an article in the lifestyle section at the beginning of spring reminding people.
I have the same memories, and I always presumed that most areas had similar requirements. And by my memory, it was not just paperwork: I had to demonstrate that I could ride my bike safely around the traffic cones they had set up.
Long Beach, California required bicycle registration until early 2011. The law was apparently widely ignored (it certainly was by me), partly because actually performing the registration was a major pain; what really prompted efforts to change it was its apparent inconsistency with Long Beach’s efforts to promote itself as one of the more bike-friendly cities in the area.
Here is a city news release discussing the change back when it was under city council consideration in December 2010:
Here is a blog article from the Los Angeles Times in February 2011 describing the passage of the above-mentioned motion.
The current website of the City of Long Beach contains this in the FAQ:
I remember having a registration sticker on my bike as a little kid growing up in Wisconsin. I also remember that during freshman orientation at UW-Madison in 1992 we were strongly encourage to get our bikes registered at a local fire station. Not sure if registration was required in Madison at the time, but it more about having a way to prove a bike was yours if it was stolen.
The primary purpose was to help make it easier to track stolen bicycles and return them to the rightful owners. My sister and I came home from school one day to find a cop car with out bikes in the trunk. Somebody had broken into the garage and taken them. Thief was caught, but without those numbers our bikes would’ve ended up at the police auction.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s required around here, either, but it’s strongly encouraged. It’s a flat $5 fee (I think they may even have changed it to free), for a little sticker that lasts forever (in both a legal and practical sense). It only takes a couple of minutes at the campus police station to fill out the forms, and I think most people go through with it just because it’s ultimately in the owner’s best interest.
Don’t know if it’s still in force, but the city of Florissant Missouri, a St. Louis suburb, used to require bike licenses. Supposed to reduce theft by making it easy to see if the rider was the registered owner.