Just the other day I saw some very dubious people on BART with dockless bikes. I had to wonder if there's a good secondary market in bike parts that makes those things worth stealing.
i work near a group of homeless bike chop shop people with trash bins filled with parts. they move alot* of bikes.
i dont see any of the ford or jump bikes around. i think they are just so awash in parts and frames, there really isn't any strong pull to try to mine the bike rental stream. the frames in particular are probably worthless except as steel scrap.
With regards to the Ford bikes, that's actually by design. The Ford bikes are basically the same as Montreal's Bixi, which uses custom parts; this means that since the parts only fit the Ford bikes, there's no reason to chop them for parts, as they won't fit on a regular bike. They also require custom tools to work on them, making it less likely that they'll be chopped up for parts in the first place.
They're all custom made. Maybe selling scrap-metal could be worth it but if the GPS track of a lot of bikes ends at certain addresses, they'll probably start investigating.
My usual profile for those bikes is tourists and young professionals. These were grizzled, grubby older men. Plus, the theory of these bikes is as last-mile transportation; I've never seen them on BART before or since.
