A major extension to Utrecht’s railway station bike park opens today, making it the biggest underground garage for bikes in the world, with space for 12,656 two-wheelers. Digital signs direct you to free parking spaces, a Bicycle & Service Point repairs your bike and pedestrian crossings let you cross the busy bike lanes. Total cost: € 30 million. It's part of a strategy in which hundreds of millions of euros are being devoted to enhancing cycling infrastructure across the Netherlands, as the country is now home to more bikes than people...
“If you want to get people out of their cars and into public transport, you need to make sure using public transport is easy and comfortable," said Stientje van Veldhoven, a junior infrastructure minister. "It needs to be very easy to park your bike as close to the train as possible – and you don’t want to be looking for half an hour for a space.”
Every day, 125,000 cyclists go through the city centre to work, school and the station, and the world’s largest bike park sits perfectly in this global cycling city.”
And that's exactly what this parking lot tries to do. The city of Utrecht is promoting cycling as part of a “healthy urban living” policy. “We are counting on biking as a healthy and sustainable form of transport for a growing city,” said the deputy mayor, Victor Everhardt. “Cycling is in the genes of people from Utrecht and in 1885 it built the Netherlands’ first bike lane. Every day, 125,000 cyclists go through the city centre to work, school and the station, and the world’s largest bike park sits perfectly in this global cycling city.”
How a country ends up with more bikes than people
The Netherlands is home to about 23 million actively used bikes. However the country, which is only as big as Switzerland, is inhabited by 17 million people, leaving some people with 2 different bikes. The reason for that has a lot to do with the urbanisation of the country.
The heart of the country consists of the Randstad, which is a heavily urbanised area that includes the four biggest and most important Dutch cities: Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. As more people are moving to this area, which is only as big as Luxembourg, the Dutch are looking for solutions to solve the huge congestion this area has to deal with. It's therefore been investing millions in bike infrastructure and public transport.
In a country that lies for 26% under sea level, a giant cycle network has been built (and is still under construction) to offer a fast and safe, environmental friendly and cheap option to get from A to B. The country holds, according to the Dutch fietsbond, with 35 000km of bike lanes the record of most bike lanes per square metre. In comparison, the United States' network, which is as a country 240 times bigger, only has 21 000km.
Bicycle superhighways
The Dutch network consists of local city bike lanes, which are often the most convenient way to travel (in Utrecht and Amsterdam for example) as narrow streets can't be driven by cars. Besides those, there is a network of bicycle superhighways which connect cities the same way as freeways for cars: Bridges and tunnels avoid any intersection and a minimum lane width (in each direction) lets you pass slower traffic. The extensive use of these networks however causes already cycle congestion during rush hours. However, they are obviously much smaller than car congestion.
Some of those bicycle highways extend into neighbouring Germany and Belgium. It's neatly connected to the Flemish 'Fietssnelwegen (bike highway) network', which is partly under construction and will connect all Flemish cities over a 2400km network.
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