Bicycle Parking Problems in Utrecht, Netherlands

In a country with more bikes than people, parking your bicycle at a popular destination such as train stations can be a problem. The bigger the station the bigger the problem. Around this station there are a number of indoor guarded parking facilities with space for thousands of bikes. Still the street closest to the station looks like this.
Taken on a Thursday afternoon at about 2:30 (14:30).

Category:

Education

Tags:

• bicycle
• parking
• problems
• huge
• number
• parked
• bikes
• Utrecht
• Netherlands
• bike
• track
• path
• stalling
• fiets
• fietsen
• fietsenstalling
• central
• station
• Holland

[ZakPlastic]

Most of the bikes in this video are abandoned by their owner. Municipalities only remove dangerously or wrong parked bicycles like the ones blocking traffic or blocking pedestrians. Altough there are plans to remove all the bicycles as soon as they finish a huge bicycleparking in the Utrecht central staion area. then if you park your bicycle wrongfully within the station area it will be removed almost right away and you have to retrieve it at a bike repository after paying money of course.

[markenlei]

@ZakPlastic there are some but certainly not 'most of the bikes' are abandoned. All these bikes are tagged very regularly (they do that a lot these days) and those with a tag of 30 days old are removed. The number of those is much lower than you think. Once the new station is ready (in a couple of years) they want to introduce payed parking for bicycles, and a full parking ban on the streets, that is true.

[MuhsinTheMomin]

wow.....THE whole country must be bleedin healthy...you guys must be the healthiest people on the planet.....best place on earth to find a wife then eh ..>?

[SonicYouthXXX]

Now imagine all of them going by car :D

[martin260273]

@MonnsterMan let them see these video's from the netherlands ;)

[tomaspollard]

Actually, I park my bike in the stall near the first light and my bike was removed because I left it there for 20 days without using it. I had to go to the depot and pay 12 euro 50 cents to get it back. When I got my bike, I saw another truckload of bikes going to the depot. If you park in the wrong place, your bike is taken that day. All these bikes are parked correctly, I think.

[SinisterNL]

@MuhsinTheMomin its funny,,, in lots of countries they only do it for exercise. And we jsut do it for transport

[Hals]

@jeffsandychelsea

Alot of people do it, and all those bikes get taken away. You can pick them up for a small fee @ the general bike storage, as a penalty for not parking your bike right.

[MonnsterMan]

I live in Ohio, and work at a company with over 500 employees. I am the only one who rides a bike to work. We also have an excellent workout facility(free) at work., I have only seen two other people in it. No one can find the time to do these simple, healthy, inexpensive activities, but they always can tell you what happened on t.v the night before.

[macchina13]

I wished I lived in a country like this, where my thoughts see eye to eye with the majority. Not in a place where people idolatre cars, like here in Brasil. Guess I´m the only one here (or one of the few) who thinks and uses bike as a mean of transportation. Oh God, it sux to live among "white monkeys".

[dcp8nts]

I've been there and rode bikes with my friends from Zeist. Awesome country! So much beats driving a car.

[MrDmitchel]

Imagine if it were a machine