Bicycle Friendly

Amsterdam is known as one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. While cities like New York struggle to get people onto bikes, Amsterdam is trying to keep its hordes of bikes under control. In a city of ~800,000, there are ~ 1 million bicycles. In the past two decades, travel by bike has grown by 40 percent and about 32 percent of all trips within the city are by bike, compared with 22 percent by car. Currently one of the biggest challenges faced by the city is the wild parking of bikes. Commuters like to drop their bikes close to the train station before jumping on a train, often just chaining them to lampposts in front of the station entrance. Workers remove about 100 such bikes every day hacksawing through chain locks. Over the next two decades, the city plans to invest $135 million to improve the biking infrastructure, including the creation of 38,000 bike parking racks in the hot spots around the city.

Available in print at arnojenkins.com.

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