The Amsterdam alderman Egbert de Vries (Traffic) sees no point in a trial with bicycle parking spaces on the street in which parking is only possible for a limited time. The VVD had proposed such a trial in places where bicycles can now simply be parked in underground bicycle parking garages.

According to VVD councilor Anne Marttin, the use of bicycle parking garages on Beursplein, for example, can sometimes be too cumbersome if cyclists only have to be in a shop for a short time. She therefore asked the city council to make short-term parking spaces with blue bicycle staples, ‘following the example of the blue parking zone for the car’.

Sixty minutes

Marttin set up a maximum parking time of sixty minutes. The staff of the underground car parks themselves or by means of a ‘technological solution in the bicycle staples’.

De Vries knows in answer to the VVD’s questions that parking in a bicycle parking garage can indeed sometimes be experienced as cumbersome. he reckons that the use of an underground bicycle shed ‘mainly has advantages’. It also points out that there are often already a small number of above-ground bicycle parking spaces near the parking garages.

Efficient

“The current bicycle sections already offer a customer-friendly and detailed way of providing designation areas for short-term parking”, says De Vries. “The Commission is therefore of the opinion that a pilot with 60-minute bicycle parking facilities is unnecessary and not developed.”

The enforcement of the trial proposed by the VVD, according to De Vries, would also be included. Personnel of underground bicycle parking garages are not authorized to tow bicycles away from fines. There are also ‘no legally tenable goods, technical possibilities’ to check whether there are more than sixty minutes.