mumei

When I lived in Kyoto, Japan a couple of years back, I found out that you had to get a bicycle license. In fact, when I bought a used bike, I was required to pay for registering the bike at the shop, about $10-20 if memory serves correct.

One thing that took me by surprise in Kyoto was that the police periodically stop cyclists and see if their registration matches the information they give. I had lived in Tokyo for a couple of years and they had never done anything like that, but then Kyoto is small enough to just use a bicycle for your primary means of transportation.

Anyway moving on, bike theft is pretty rampant in Japan, usually just some drunks not wanting to walk home. Long story short, my bike was stolen. Being American, I look it for granted that it was gone forever. Low and behold a few months later, I got a call from the police saying they recovered my bike. Mind you, it was a piece of cr*p, but I was happy to get it back. Granted the stolen bicycle was probably just abandoned on the side of the road and then picked up by the police, as opposed to the police actively investigating and pursuing the bicycle thief.

Point of this too long narrative, I'm all in favor of bike registration/licensing if it works the way it should, versus just another way to get money for local government.

flammenwurfer

The reason I don't agree with it is because I've never seen it work the way it was supposed to. I've heard of multiple people getting $76 worth of fines, but never once have I heard of anybody getting their bike back.