Last week we hosted a study tour group from Norway. There are always a few things that we discover that we've not seen before. This is one of them. A bicycle light vending machine.
Bicycles parked at the university in Groningen - the indoor cycle-parking with the vending machine is just around the corner and helps to reduce stress here.
If you leave your bicycle outside
of a rack it will be "towed away".
The reason why we found the vending machine is that it was inside a free facility that we visited in which 725 bicycles can be parked indoor and are guarded. Like all cities in the Netherlands, Groningen has a bit of a problem finding enough space for all the bicycles to be parked without them being in the way. This is why bicycles are threatened with being "towed away" and why there are such initiatives as red carpets on sidewalks to reserve space for pedestrians. Ultimately the bicycles have to go somewhere, and providing indoor cycle parking which is free to use is one way of dealing with a part of the problem rather than simply punishing people which might lead to less cycling. That's why Groningen has built several such facilities in peak cycle-parking areas, such as next to the university and next to a cinema.
Most Dutch cities have indoor guarded cycle parking, and many of them are free to use. For example, this cycle-park which opened last year in the rebuilt library/theatre/cinema complex in Assen:
When we were at this cycle-park last week on the study tour, there was someone vacuuming around the bicycles. Making sure that cycle-parking is clean and attractive and doesn't smell improves social safety and is part of what makes it work.
See other examples of guarded cycle parking in otherplaces.
40% of passengers on Dutch trains arrived at the railway station by bike. This makes it impractical to allow people to all take their bikes on the trains, especially at rush hour. In this way, cycling is a victim of its own success. One of the solutions to the problem is the OV-Fiets.
The Dutch shared bike scheme, OV-Fiets, is a bit unlike most bike share schemes in that it operates with public transport. OV stands for "Openbaar Vervoer" which is Dutch for "Public Transport."
These bikes are available at 200 locations around the country, including almost all railway stations. The idea is that they are used by commuters. An annual subscription costs just €9.50 per year, and then it costs €2.85 to hire a bike for a day. This can be a maximum of 20 hours - the idea being that it is not for tourists - though virtually every railway station also has normal hire bikes available.
OV-Fiets bikes are always either under the roof of the railway station bike shop or in the possession of someone who has hired the bike. I suspect this keeps the vandalism rate well down in comparison with some other bike share schemes. However, they are also available from lockers or even "bike dispenser" vending machines at some locations.
Anyway, the video shows the 400 OV-Fiets bikes which are currently in Vancouver in Canada for the use of Dutch athletes during the winter Olympics. It's a bit odd in that people are wearing fluorescent jackets, and even helmets... but the prime minister doesn't bother even though they're compulsory.
On to the Olympics. The photo shows Sven Kremer signing a golden OV-Fiets after winning the gold medal for the 5000 m ice skating race yesterday. He set a new Olympic record time of 6:14.60.
And talking of ice-skating... It's still pretty cold here. People have been skating on the canals, and velomobiling on lakes too...
Have you ever had a puncture when the bicycle shops are shut and needed to buy an inner tube to fix your bike ?
This vending machine on the wall of a bike shop in Assen provides cyclists with a place to find a new inner tube 24 hours a day.
Provided, that is, that they know where it is (it was in Groningerstraat. Unfortunately it's gone now. There's another in a village a little way south of Assen).
