The growing use of cargo and electric bikes leads to overcrowded bicycle parkings at stations in the Netherlands. “Bicycle sheds are not fitted for these huge and heavy bikes” says Sonja Sanders, programmanager assetmanagement stations south of the Netherlands from ProRail.
The cargo and electric bikes have become an integral part of the Dutch streetscape. Bikes that take people from A to B quick and easy, until people have to park these bikes somewhere. Parking outside is often not an option, “electric bikes are often very expensive, when you park these outside you can be certain that they will be gone at night”, says Sanders. “Then you also have the electric cargo bikes or just cargo bikes in general. These won’t fit in the outside sheds anyways, so these have to go inside.”
The inside bicycle sheds in the Netherlands are enormous. The bicycle shed at Utrecht station for example counts 12.500, making it the largest in the world. So, parking your bike inside should be fine right? The answers of Sanders is no. “People are lazy, they do not want to search for a place. Everyone just puts their bike somewhere, which makes it look messy.” Besides the lay out of the sheds is often not fitting. “In the past due to lack of space there has been chosen to make double-layered racks. A nice solution back then but the heavy huge cargo, electric and extra wide tyred bikes of nowadays do not fit.”
An electric mountain bike does not fit in the bike rack and sticks out onto the footpath. Photograph: Floor Vegter
Then there are also self-service sheds, these are unmanned sheds where people go in by themselves with their public transport card opening the gates. Designed as a cheap solution, but according to Sanders the concept does not work properly. “It is socially unsafe, there is a complete lack of supervision causing it to end up messy and high numbers of theft.” The wrongly parked bikes due to lack of space are even a bigger problem there, due to no staff who can address people.
A girl leaving the bicycle shed by using the public transport card to open the gates. Photograph: Floor Vegter
The enforcement of the sheds is very difficult in the first place. The municipalities are the only one allowed to enforce the wrongly parked and abandoned bikes, these are bikes that have been left unattended for a longer time in a public space. The level of enforcement differs per municipality, the cleaning up requires a big deployment of staff and is very costly. “The bikes need to be cut open, removed and brought to the depot. The depots are often on the other side of the city. Annoying for the owner of the bike, but also very intensive work for the enforcers.”
But how can we deal with this growing use of electric and cargo bikes? The sheds are being renovated and redesigned with more spaces for outdoor model bikes, like electric and cargo bikes. This is a slow process and needs to be done station by station Sanders explains. “The renovation of sheds is being paid through a grant from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. We plan when the sheds need to be adjusted, this is approximately every 15 years. This will then be put in a big Excel-sheet, for which a grant application is submitted. But we do not get more then the grants amounts.” It is a long process, but one that is essential to keep up with the growing use of electric and cargo bikes.
