Just to compare, this is the utopian dream for Toronto:
There are approx. 18 cars and trucks in that image.
They are taking up SIGNIFICANTLY more space, and are causing traffic.
Still, we keep saying, “give us more of this, please!”.
Insanity or stupidity?
In a random US city a lot of these bikes would probably be abandoned / with parts missing. Does Amsterdam have that problem? I’ve heard a lot of bikes go into the canal but I can’t imagine this is a big problem. How does Amsterdam deal with theft / vandalism / bike abandonment?
You see a fair number of vandalized bikes. And some absurd number end up in a canal every year.
the stations usually have underground guarded bike parking lots, but if you put a nice looking bike in a bad part of a city and dont put a chain on it, it’ll probably get stolen. And, of course, the drunk students throwing them in the canals.
This might sound bad, but its not actually that bad. if you just put a chain around it, nothing happens.
The traditional Dutch city bike typically has an internal lock that clamps the rear wheel, and they’re often made so that you can attach a long cable to the lock, to attach the bike to a fence or a tree.
yeah, but you can just roll it on its front wheel. That’s what the drunk students do, and also why it’s really handy to use a chain lock yeah
Theft happens, for the cheap ones it’s considered part of the natural lifecycle (no pun intended) of the bikes. They’re usually stolen by the local junks and sold for €10 in the next square over. But nicer bikes are usually locked to something fixed like a pole and insured. Still they’re stolen because people will cut the lock at night, yeet them in the back of a van and drive back to Eastern Europe.
Vandalism rarely happens afaik, why would someone go around and destroy random bikes? Not really a reason unless they’re like really drunk and an asshole I guess. Some indeed end up in the canal this way.
Bike abandonment is handled by the municipality. They’ll label bikes that look abandoned with a sticker that says “please remove this sticker or we’ll remove your bike in a week”. Works well.
In Amsterdam, drunk youths will kick in the wheels of bikes as they walk along. I’ve seen it, and even more, have seen the results. As to why, I’d guess that it’s because they’re arseholes.
Haha, sounds like England.
I always try to avoid leaving my bike anywhere too central for too long in my shithole town on Thursday, Friday , Saturday nights. The roaming gangs of twats love pringling wheels just for fun - I guess.
We used to have a decent bike place in the train station, but that’s now ran by car park wardens who think a pair of painnears are a major terrorist threat.
Well, you might not be wrong about that in Amsterdam either :’)
…in my north american experience, those bikes would either be stolen or stripped within a day…
No it would take a while, more like a week.
But on day 1 there would already be at least one stripped bike already there.
I live in another very bike centric city, Copenhagen, and bike theft is ~0.5% of bikes every year. Many people lock the bike wheels here, some lock them to a rack/something else as well. It’s a lot less locky than the US (where I used to live), but theft still exists.
Since everyone has more support and means here, there is a lot less incentive to steal a bike. It’s of course punished harshly but rarely caught.
No clue how Amsterdam handles it or how prevalent it is
Way more prevalent but it’s also kind of accepted as a part of life. People will have multiple bikes, the race one, the fancy one and a cheap one they bought 20€ from a local junkie and will get stolen again and resold the same way at some point. If you go somewhere with a safe spot for the bike you take the fancy one, if you’re going out drinking you take the rust bucket.
That sounds like a non-issue.
Where I live, in Canada, I basically have to use two locks and an alarm on my bike.
Hell, thieves around here will break into garages or backyard sheds to steal a bike. Or right out of your apartment’s bike storage.
I guess the point is, more bikes won’t equal more problems 😂
There’s plenty of theft, most people have a city/shitty bike with decent locks (chained to a solid object). Vandalism does occur, like bikes thrown in the canal, but theft is more of a problem.
When i was there, a lot of them weren’t fancy bikes, just get around bikes. Even if there was theft they weren’t much to lose.