An underwater parking lot for 7,000 bicycles was built in Amsterdam
The underwater parking is located at Amsterdam Central Station and accommodates 7,000 bicycles – 6,300 personal and 700 for rent. In February, another garage will be opened nearby and the capacity will increase to 11,000 vehicles.
It took 4 years to build a large underwater garage worth 60 million euros, and it is provided exclusively for bicycles. It may seem strange, but for the Netherlands, such selectivity is commonplace. The country is methodically turning private cars into relics of a false past — a time when cities were built around the needs of cars, not people.
Een kijkje in de nieuwe (en grootste) fietsenstalling van onze stad! 🚲 Deze is vandaag geopend en ligt aan de centrumkant van het Centraal Station.
↔️In totaal is hier ruimte voor 7.000 fietsen.
📅Op 28 januari vieren we de vernieuwing van het Stationseiland. Ben jij er bij?🎉 pic.twitter.com/HIvJ9NelTf
— Gemeente Amsterdam (@AmsterdamNL) January 25, 2023
About 30% of Amsterdam residents use bicycles every day, and 50% in Utrecht (in this city, by the way, there is an even larger underground (but not underwater) bicycle garage that can accommodate 12,000 units of two-wheeled transport).
On the timelapse, you can see how this underwater miracle of engineering was built.
Around 200,000 travelers arrive at Amsterdam Central Station every day – and around half arrive by bicycle. Previously, they parked at special stands that chaotically surrounded the station. They should be removed in the coming days.
In Amsterdam, they built a giant bicycle parking lot under water. The first day is free, each subsequent day is €1.35
Parking in the garage is free for the first 24 hours, after that you will have to pay 1.35 euros for each additional day.
At the entrance to the garage there is a large blue sign with a bicycle logo, which also shows the number of free spaces. You can get into the premises by registering with a special OV-chipkaart (Dutch transport card linked to a bank) or Fietstag (a tag installed on a bicycle).
The parking lot does not yet have special places for large-sized cargo bikes, which are very common in Amsterdam in families with small children; there are also no charging stations for electric bicycles, and not everyone would like to leave the Fietstag on the transport. However, such small shortcomings cannot overshadow the admiration for the actions of the country, which creates all the necessary infrastructure for the use of ecological transport.
Previously, the French government increased the amount of subsidy to 4,000 euros per person in the case of replacing a car with a gasoline engine for an electric bicycle. The payment should encourage the abandonment of polluting modes of transport in favor of environmentally friendly alternatives.
