Amsterdam and it’s bikes.

Where most major cities in the world have to deal with enormous amounts of cars and traffic jams, Amsterdam has it’s own problems. This has to do with something typical Dutch: bicycles. Thousands of them that are shoved in and on top of each other in bicycle racks all over the city. Parking bikes has become a big problem in Amsterdam.

The Netherlands has about 16 million inhabitants and just as much bicycles. If you take into account that young children and elderly people do not have bikes and that there are some people that do not own a bike, this means that many inhabitants of Holland have more than one bike per person. Many of these bikes are used as spare bikes or are not used at all and left on the streets.

All these bicycles on Amsterdam’s streets cause nuisance and sometimes even dangerous situations. The Amsterdam council has therefore decided that in the coming year more bike racks will be installed and in some places like Central Station a ‘bike coach’ will tell you where to park your bike and where not.    

Source: Amsterdam Magazine, Parool.nl