 Well, good morning. Welcome. So happy to be here this morning to welcome Project 529 to Denver. This simple registration and identification system for bicycles will bring bike security in Denver into the 21st century. We have been making a great effort in recent years to get people out of their cars. One of the places we want them to go is from four wheels to two wheels. We're building bike lanes. We're offering rebates on e-bikes. We're doing everything we can to get people onto bicycles, but we haven't been doing the job that we need to do to keep those bicycles safe. Fortunately, from here on bikes registered with 529 Garage, their owners can feel a little bit more secure that their bikes will remain in good hands. Their own. I want to thank Denver Police Department. I want to thank folks at Project 529. I want to thank my colleague, Councilman Jolin Clark, who unfortunately couldn't be with us this morning for his efforts to put this together. I want to thank my aide, Brent Farberger, who's done a whole lot of the heavy lifting and coordinating things moving forward. And I want to thank Brad Evans, one of our local cycling enthusiasts, who actually brought the seed of this project to my office. You know, my own experience, I bought a bike, an e-bike about a year and a half ago, and I went on to the city's existing website at that time to sign my bike up. And I gave up halfway through from frustration. It was a difficult site and wasn't user-friendly the way we need. When I became familiar with 529, I jumped on in about two minutes. My bike was signed up, and as I'm standing here, I'm realizing I need to finish that, log on pictures of my bike, which is easy to do, so that I'm as secure as I hope cyclists throughout the city will be. So again, I want to thank everybody for being here. I think it's going to change things the way bikes are recovered, if they happen to be taken. And I think people are going to have a whole lot more peace of mind moving forward. With that, I want to introduce one of our main partners in this situation, Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas. Good morning and thank you. You know, sadly, far too many of us have had the misfortune of having our bikes stolen. And for a number of us, you know, bicycles are a source of recreation. But for a lot of us, you know, bicycles are our main source of transportation. And so, you know, we're so fortunate and thankful for our partnership with Councilman Cashman, Councilman Clark for bringing to us this Garage 529 project and platform. We think it's going to be much more user-friendly. I anticipate much more participation. And the platform also allows for some user participation. And so why is all this important? So last year, over 400 bicycles were recovered but not returned to their rightful owners. And that's because they were not registered. And so we think that the much more user-friendly process here will allow folks to register their bicycles much more easily. And then when they have the misfortune of having a stolen and they report that vehicle stolen and also reported stolen on the platform, not only will we be looking for that bicycle, and then when we recover that bicycle, be able to track the registration back to the rightful owner. And then, you know, there's other folks on the platform that will be able to be watchful for that bicycle maybe being sold on the secondary market. And can notify us so that we can be successful in recovering that bicycle. And I think one more added benefit to this entire program is that there's a decal that's available that we hope will be a deterrent to folks that would be inclined to steal a bicycle. Understanding that that is going to be very helpful and beneficial in us being able to identify and recover that bicycle and return it to the rightful owner. And so, at this point, I'd like to step aside and turn it over to Brad Evans. Hi, I'm Brad Evans. I am the founder of the Denver Cruiseride and Bicycle Forward. This is a great day. It's a great partnership with the city and the bike community for bicycles to make it safer, not just to ride bikes, but to register your bikes and not to be afraid of having your bikes stolen and then not know how you're going to get home. So we're super excited. This is a great partnership. This is great for Denver. Please jump on the website, register your bike. This is to all the users that do ride their bikes. The more bikes that are registered, the more opportunity there is for recovery if they do get stolen. As Chief Thomas said, 400 bikes last year went unrecovered because they weren't registered. So this system is super easy to use and it's a great benefit to all bicycle users and in partnership with the city to make sure that when they do get stolen that they get returned. Thank you. No, that's all right. Good morning. My name is Peter Pocola. I'm the executive director of the nonprofit called Bicycle Colorado. We advocate for the interests of roughly 2 million people across the state who love to ride bikes for recreation and everyday trips. It's a pleasure to be here at my neighborhood bike shop, Campus Cycles, to talk about Garage 529, a really important platform to curb bike theft. I want to share with you the gist of a conversation I had this weekend with somebody who rides bikes. We're talking about who's a bike rider, who actually is a cyclist and the value of a bicycle and of course bike theft in our state. It's interesting in Colorado. It's such a rich history of cycling. We have iconic races and events, mountain top climbs, whether on pavement or dirt. When you ask somebody, in your mind, who is a cyclist? Typically, when I ask that question, the response I get is something along the lines of someone who's super fit, probably pretty skinny, wearing funny, tight clothes, riding a fancy, expensive bike. And I push back on that right away and it's such a narrow definition of someone who rides a bike. A person who rides a bike is anyone on two wheels, regardless of your age, your body shape, your gender, what you wear, what you ride, where you ride, how you ride. And we started talking about bikes and the value of a bike. I think the value of a bike is much more than the price tag or what you'd pay for a bike. The value of a bike is what it means to you. And I would argue that a $300 bike that somebody uses to get to work every day or to get to school is as valuable as the fancy bike that, say, I ride on weekends to stay fit. And I share that with you because any bike stolen, whether it's a $300 commuter bike or a fancy, expensive bike that people race on, every bike stolen is a loss. It needs to be addressed. So I also talk to people a lot about what would it take to get you riding bikes more often? And there are two responses that always bubble up to the top. The first is I want to feel physically safe. I don't want to fear for my life while riding a bike, which is why we need high quality bike infrastructure to keep people physically safe. The second response I hear is I am afraid for my bike's safety. I'm afraid that my bike is going to get stolen. So in Colorado, we've been investing millions of dollars in bike infrastructure to protect cyclists from vehicles. We're also investing now millions of dollars here in the city of Denver and soon across the state in rebates and tax credits to lower the cost of bikes so more people can access e-bikes specifically. To maximize our return on that investment, to get more people riding bikes, we have to address this crisis which is bikes being stolen, bikes not being returned to their owners. The only way we're going to get the greatest number of people riding bikes around our state. And I think to be able to solve this problem, the community needs to come together to implement a systemic solution. By community, I mean any person who rides a bike, bike clubs, bike shops, organizations like businesses or schools that promote biking, we need to come together and implement this systemic solution. And an important piece of this systemic solution is a technology or a tool like Garage 529. So I can't encourage people who ride bikes enough to today get online and register your bike. Thank you. Hi, my name is Michael. I'm one of the owners here at Campus Cycles. I want to start by just thanking the city of Denver and the Denver Police Department as well as Garage 529 for allowing us to host this press conference this morning. As a bike shop owner, obviously I have a great passion for bicycles, as does my entire staff. We love helping people find new bikes. We love helping people find new bikes because they want to, not because they have to, because their last bike got stolen. So partnering with Garage 529 is really exciting for us as a hopeful deterrent, helping people when they do get that new bike to know that it's going to stay with them for a long time and that they're not going to be back here six weeks, three months later to have to replace it because someone else decided it should be their bike. So like I said, we're very happy to be a part of Garage 529. We actually do have a connection to 529 from our website CampusCycles.com. So super quick and easy way to get your bikes registered. Make them safe and keep your bike for a long, long time, we hope. This is our deterrent. What do you get as a sticker? You get the stickers at our shop and I believe there are several other bike shops across the Denver Metro area and I believe there will be, are they available through the website as well, I believe? 529garage.com. 529garage.com. You can order stickers directly from the website during registration process as well. We do have them on display here at the shop and they will be at other shops across the Metro area. We're super excited with this program because it was launched in Vancouver a few years back and had a 40% reduction in bike theft the first year. So we're really hoping that this will have a big impact and the way that it'll work is with this partnership with the city, with the police department and the bike community registering their bikes. That's the way that this is going to work. It's super exciting with that 40%, with thousands of bikes not being stolen, a big change for Denver. Thank you. Brad, it's important to pair this with bike theft prevention tools as well. Yeah, besides, you know, this is one avenue to protect your bike. The other one is to get a great bike lock. The other one is to secure bikes at night, not leave it in places. And then there's also bike storage that we're trying to work on Metro Y2. It's like, hey, where is a safe place to lock your bike so that it's protected. So that's kind of another angle on bike safety. Yeah, so this is just one type of lock. This doesn't necessarily guarantee that your bike's going to be stolen, but you've probably seen those thin little cable locks. I can get those with scissors. This takes a few more seconds, but this is definitely a deterrent also to this whole system. So it's a trifecta of protected bike storage, registration, and then bike locks. So that's what we're hoping to do here with this partnership is to reduce bike theft so that you can ride your bike and know that your bike will be there when you get back.