Wednesday 2 June 2010

Golden cycle stand

In 1999 a programme called "Room for the bike" began, aiming to increase the amount of cycle parking at Dutch railway stations.

The 200000th new cycle parking stand due to this programme has just been installed in Hardenberg. It's coloured gold. The 200000 are made up of 157000 unwatched stands, 30000 watched places and 13000 cycle lockers.

60000 more cycle parking spaces at railway stations will be installed by 2012, and ProRail promises to keep up a rate of building 25000 new spaces per year at least until 2020.

The result is that the entire country has an enormous ratio of bicycle parking spaces available to the population of the town in which they exist.

Some of the cycle-parking at Assen railway station, expanded under this scheme.
Assen, where we live, has a cycle-parking space at the railway station for every 25 citizens. Groningen has better than one space for every 20 people, the village of Beilen has enough for one in fifteen and the small town of Meppel has enough for one in twelve.

Read all stories on this blog about railway station cycle parking.

The cycle stand shown at the top is a "Tulip" design. These are the very best cycle-stands. Read why in a previous blog post previously.

4 comments:

creating my life said...

how do people find their bikes again? is there some kind of system and what is it?

Anneke said...

There is no system. You'll just have to remember where you've put it. Or have such a distinctive bike (strange colour and/or flowers attached etc) that it always stands out. I recently saw a stand in the HEMA shop with bike locks in all colours of the rainbow, plastic flowers, spray paint, rubber ties and all kinds of bells. Funny how spray paint and flowers are connected to the locks and bells. :)

David Hembrow said...

I find it helps to have distinctively patterned baskets on my bike.

Kim said...

If only we have half as much cycle parking in Edinburgh. ;-(