Registro Bici: Bogotá's Mandatory Bicycle Register
Bogotá runs Colombia's only municipal bicycle register — one record per bike, carrying the frame serial number, photographs and a sworn ownership declaration. Decreto 790 de 2018 created it; Decreto 242 de 2021 made registration compulsory from 2 January 2022, though the sanction announced for riding unregistered is only a police warning. Officers check serial numbers against the register at roadside stops and in raids on resale shops, and anyone can look up a bicycle before buying it second-hand. 552,920 bicycles were on the register by 30 April 2026, but the security secretariat put coverage at 41% of the city's bikes in July 2025. Recovery is the harder half: 612 stolen bicycles were recovered in the first five months of 2026, a fifth of those reported.
612 stolen bicycles recovered in January–May 2026, a 20% recovery rate; of the 2,404 recovered between 2021 and early 2024, only 545 had been entered in the register (Secretaría Distrital de Seguridad figures released to Bogotá city council).
🎓 Lesson
A register can only close the loop for objects that are on it. Three quarters of the bicycles Bogotá recovered up to 2024 were unregistered, and compulsory registration backed by nothing heavier than a warning still left most of the city's bikes off the books.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🏙️ City-wide
Sources
↗ Observatorio de Movilidad de Bogotá — Tablero CiclistaOperator dashboard. States the register was created by Decreto 790 de 2018 and made mandatory by Decreto 242 de 2021; lists its published contents (registered users by gender, zone and locality; bicycles by locality, type and price range), names 'Registro Bici' as the data source with a daily update frequency, and marks data available from 2018. Aggregate only — explicitly 'sin liberar datos personales', no per-bicycle export.
↗ Registro Distrital de Bicicletas — the register itself (SDM)The live system. Automated fetch on 26 July 2026 returned only the page title (JavaScript application), so its fields and the public 'Consultar información de bicicleta' lookup were verified through city and press descriptions rather than the portal itself.
↗ Alcaldía de Bogotá — Decreto 242 de 2021 explainerDates the decree to 20 September 2021 and states cyclists must carry the registration certificate digitally or physically for competent authorities to validate. Names the Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad with the Secretaría de Seguridad, Convivencia y Justicia as issuers of the certificate. States no sanction.
↗ Alcaldía de Bogotá — not registering breaches the coexistence code (6 July 2022)Cited for a contradiction, not for support: this page describes a 'multa tipo cuatro… equivalente a $533.000 por 16 SMDLV', which conflicts with the amonestación announced in January 2022. City communications do not agree on the sanction, so the entry claims only the warning.
↗ El Tiempo — how to register a bike or check it is not stolen before buyingSource for the public per-object lookup: a 'Consultar información de bicicleta' query returns whether a bike is flagged stolen. Sources differ on whether the key is the frame serial or the assigned sticker number, so the entry says only 'look up a bicycle'.
↗ Semana — bicycle thefts in Bogotá fall 13.8% in 2026 (3 June 2026)Carries the exact registration count: 'al 30 de abril de 2026, en la capital hay 552.920 bicicletas registradas'. Also: reports down 13.8% to May 2026; robbery with force 1,248 (Jan–May 2025) to 465; bikes taken while parked 818 to 95. Figures attributed to the Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad and the Secretaría Distrital de Seguridad.
↗ Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad — 886,000 daily bicycle trips (3 June 2026)Operator release. Source of 'la plataforma supera las 550.000 bicicletas registradas' and 'se han recuperado más de 2.400 bicicletas hurtadas' under the current administration, quoted by secretary Claudia Díaz. The 2,400 figure is deliberately kept out of the snippet and impact: it is near-identical to the 2,404 recovered in 2021–early 2024 that the city council reported in April 2024 for a different period, and no method is published for either.
↗ El Nuevo Siglo — Bogotá recovered only 20% of stolen bicycles this year (24 July 2026)Independent press carrying the impact figure sentence: 612 bicycles recovered in the first five months of 2026, a 20% recovery rate, from Secretaría Distrital de Seguridad data obtained through a derecho de petición by concejal Diana Diago. Also: Suba 465, Engativá 410, Kennedy 341 reports; Santa Fe recoveries fell from 80 to 22; the secretariat keeps no separate database for electric bicycle and scooter theft.
↗ Infobae — only 10 of every 100 stolen bicycles are recovered in Bogotá (24 April 2024)The single most load-bearing counterweight, from councillor Rolando González: of 27,000 bicycles stolen 2021–2024 only 2,404 were recovered, and of those 2,404 only 545 were registered in Registro Bici. Also gives 332,890 bicycles registered at that date, two years after registration became compulsory.
↗ The Bogotá Post — Register your Bogotá bicycle to reduce thefts (14 July 2025)Independent English-language press describing the enforcement chain: bicycles are recovered 'at police check points around the city, where cycle serial numbers and descriptions are checked against ownership details, and in raids on shops reselling bikes'. Gives 847 recovered by mid-July 2025 and 280 arrests for fencing, and the security secretariat's estimate that 41% of the 1,135,000 bicycles circulating in the city are logged.
↗ Alcaldía de Bogotá — 90 stolen bicycles recovered in January 2025 (6 February 2025)Dates the register's start ('desde que empezó a funcionar la página Registro Bici Bogotá en el año 2018') and gives ~430,000 registered as of early 2025, which brackets the 552,920 figure of April 2026. City claim of a 57% fall in January theft reports year on year is operator-reported and not used.
↗ Datos Abiertos Bogotá — bicycle dataset searchChecked for a machine-readable release. No Registro Bici dataset exists on the city portal; the Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad's published bicycle datasets (counting sensors, cicloparqueaderos, shared-bike stations) carry CC BY 4.0. The register is therefore public as a per-object lookup and an aggregate dashboard, not as an open dataset — the entry is not tagged open-data.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Registro Bici: Bogotá's Mandatory Bicycle Register” — Bogotá, Colombia. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/bogota-registro-bici/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
