Bike Theft in Denver

Bike theft is on the rise in Denver.  As of 2008, Kryptonite listed Denver as the #7 Worst US City for Bike Theft.  This blog post digs into the bike crime data made available by the City and County of Denver.

Bike Theft By Neighborhood
Using the reporting tool on the Denver Crime Offenses Website, I downloaded data for each neighborhood in the city/county, from 3/27/11 through 9/25/11.

I compiled all of the bike theft data into this map, showing the best and worst neighborhoods in Denver for bike theft.

Click the image to view full size

So for the first part of 2011, the 10 worst neighborhoods for bike theft are:

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
CBD	129
Union Station	89
Five Points	76
Capitol Hill	72
Highland	41
North Capitol Hill	38
Speer	38
Auraria	34
Lincoln Park	27
Civic Center	24

And the 11 best, all with 0 bikes stolen are:

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
Chaffee Park	0
Cory - Merrill	0
Country Club	0
Globeville	0
Harvey Park	0
Kennedy	0
Mar Lee	0
Marston	0
Montclair	0
Valverde	0
Wellshire	0

The top 10 makes sense to me.  They're all neighborhoods with a lot of traffic (pedestrian, vehicle, bicycle, etc), and places where there is generally a lot going on.

I expected the areas around the University of Denver to be a bit worse than they were, especially since I've heard numerous stories of vehicle break-ins on university property.

Neighborhood	Bikes Stolen
University	18
Platt Park	16
Rosedale	3
University Park	12

Also note, there was 1 bike stolen from DIA.  I still think it's crazy to ride your bike to the airport; it's not a bike-friendly area at all.  It's possible that it was stolen off of a luggage carousel, I suppose.

Bike Theft Map of Denver
I geocoded the data from the Denver Crime Offenses Website using BatchGeo.  The map below will give you a slightly better idea of where bike theft is most common, as far as specific streets and attractions that may be targeted.  For example, the 16th St Mall.

 Click HERE to view in a new tab

I Want To Ride My Bicycle
I won't let bike thieves stop me from doing what I want... Riding my bike!

Electric Utility Outage Maps - Hurricane Irene Edition

I love utility maps.  You have been warned. 

A few days after Hurricane Irene took a swing at the east coast I looked at the outage maps for some of the electric utilities there.  I had heard reports of widespread power outages from news channels back east, but I'd also heard from friends that Irene just wasn't as bad as they had expected (they were in PA, which you'll see in a moment wasn't hit as hard as other areas).  These following outage maps show the huge impact the storm had on electric utilities.  The screenshots were taken on August 30th; about 2 days after Irene hit MD, NJ, PA, NY, etc.

Here's Hurricane Irene's path:

Ok!  Let's start in the southern part of the Northeast...


Delmarva Power (DELaware MARyland VirginiA, for those unfamiliar) had just under 2500 customers without power, as of 2 days after the storm. 

Atlantic City Electric, which covers a large portion of southern New Jersey, had over 4000 customers without power.

PSE&G had 40,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Jersey Central Power & Light had over 60,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Specifically, Monmouth County alone had over 57,000 people without power.

Let's head inland to check out the situation in Pennsylvania.
Met-Ed and PPL both look pretty decent, at least compared to NJ.

Highlighting the hardest hit part of PPL's territory

ConEdison had 33,000+ customers without power.

Here is a roll-over breakdown of where the most affected customers live:

Long Island Power Authority was hit pretty hard as well.

Connecticut Light & Power... This map really shows how hard CT was hit by the storm.  There were a few areas that had 100% of customers without power. 

National Grid

Central Maine Power's website is a bit different. Rather than having an interactive, fairly real-time map of outages, they had a series of images showing outages from 8/28 through 8/30 (when I downloaded information).  I strung their images together in an animation so you can see the change over time, and when the most people were without power.  I apologize for the jumpiness of the image... their maps were all different, and for a quick blog entry I wasn't about to spend hours adjusting each image.  Sorry!

You may need to click through to see the animated image.

If you're still with me, I hope you enjoyed the outage maps!  It was fun to see not only the heavily impacted areas, but also to check out the different types of outage maps electric utilities use on their websites.

License Plate County Codes!

I've had this post planned for a while, but this weekend I came across a new reason to finally finish the post. 

Nebraska License Plate County Codes
Aside from states like Tennessee, Georgia, and others that actually list the registrant's county on the license plate, Nebraska makes it almost as easy to figure out where someone is from, just by looking at their license plate.  In 1922 Nebraska instituted a 1- or 2-digit county code on license plates for passenger vehicles.  So if Nebraska 66-**** cuts you off on the highway, you know to look for him at home in Cherry County, NE.  Unfortunately for you, Cherry County is the largest county in the state, and is bigger than Connecticut.

There are a few counties that no longer use the county code system.  Not coincidentally, they are the state's three most populous counties: Douglas, Sarpy and Lancaster.  Dakota county had discussed discontinuing use of the county code as well, but in the end they opted to keep county code 70 on their plates. 

If you'd like a list of all of the Nebraska county codes, Wikipedia has one here.   

Other States With County Codes
County codes are more common than I had originally thought!  Not all of them are as obvious as Nebraska's though... I first noticed this because 1 or 2 digits at the beginning of a license plate has to be a code for something, right?  Here's a breakdown of the county codes I've encountered while writing this blog:

• Some states use the same 1- or 2- digit code system that Nebraska does.  They are: Alabama, Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. 
• Idaho has a cool system: the first letter of the county, with a number in front of it to differentiate it from other counties that begin with the same letter.  If the county is the only one that begins with that letter, the code is the letter by itself.  For example: 1A is Ada county 2A is Adams county and E is Elmore county. 
• Indiana's county coding system is complicated.  Not as bad as New York, but too much for me to get into in this brief blog!
• Kansas' county codes are "two letters based on the first letter of and another letter in the name of the county", according to Wikipedia.
• Mississippi has county codes that match up phonetically to the county name (in many cases, anyway).  But who cares?!  Their plates have the county name on the bottom!
• New Jersey only does county coding on "courtesy" plates, which are given to those with political connections.
• New York has the most complicated county coding system.  It started in 1973 with each county having a designated letter block.  Just look at this cross-reference on Wikipedia.  So much to remember!!
• Ohio has a different way of going about it.  They have county codes on a sticker in the lower left corner of the plate, with the county name in small text below the code number.

Carhenge
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that I had a new inspiration for finally finishing this post.  That inspiration is CARHENGE!  This past weekend I visited Carhenge, which is a replica of Stone Henge... made of cars. 

Carhenge itself is pretty cool, but inside the souvenir shop is a license plate collection.  There are plates from almost every US state, and Canadian province and territory.  Of course since Carhenge is in Nebraska, there is a huge collection of Nebraska license plates from over the years.  Awesome!

If you're nowhere near Nebraska but would still like to see samples of license plates, WorldLicensePlates is a great source [and not just for Nebraska!].