What if there are a lot of bikes?

Leave a reply

In some cities like Amsterdam (The Netherlands), there is a problem with so many bicycles on streets. Amsterdam has built at least two mega-parking next to the Central Train Station, another at the Dam square and the third at Leidseplein, to name a few. Still, when celebrating an important event there is the need of increasing safe parking for bikes. In such cases, there is the possibility of creating a parking for thousand of bicycles in a fast way in order not to use cars.

Moreover, they made a test in Pijp, the highest density neighbor in Amsterdam, consisted in painting rectangles on the soil. This proposal by the local cyclist association (Fietsersbond) reduced the sidewalk obstruction and improved the urban living. After it, the neighbor erased car parking so today shows the best equilibrium between density and accessibility. Additionally, there are places specifically designed for cargobikes since they overcome the standard bike measures.

On the other hand, some 24-h commercial premises work as public bicycles parkings and storage boxes for 5 bikes which have a shared key to the neighbor in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). This way there are less bicycles hindering sidewalks.

Walloon

Leave a reply

Walloon (Belgium) is an attractive cyclist destiny with more than 1,800 kilometers of RAVeL, several bike paths with different levels, and about 800 Bienvenue Vélo agents (safe hotels to lock your bike) to make your bike-tourist trip comfortable. Indeed, four EuroVelo cross the zone. Thus, there is a myriad of landscapes to enjoy, from the forest region of Ardennes to the Canal du Centre (Heritage of Humanity) and its four hydraulic elevators. Moreover, there are bike shops, multi-services companies and ebike charging points.

RAVeL means Slow Paths Autonomous Net, or in other words more than 1,800 kilometers for pedaling, 45 itineraries that connect to fourteen national and international routes. You can complete the lakes tour of Eau d’Heure or the VennBahn route. Regarding History, villages such as Fagnolle and Falaën make it well worth the effort as well as the Durbuy and Dinant cities.

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v90), quality = 75

BSF

Leave a reply

Bicycles have been using for more than pedaling and one of the alternative uses is helping people lives. I wrote about Soterranya and its impressive work by recovering bikes in bad state, fixing them and donating them to persons who need them. At the time of writing this post, Soterranya has given more than 3,000 bikes and actively participated in the recovery from the Valencia, Spain, DANA in the next months after October 2024 in those villages more negatively affected.

Another inspiring example is BSF (Bicicletas Sin Fronteras, Bicycles Without Frontiers) (https://www.bicicletassinfronteras.org/, in Spanish). It was born in 2015 and has donated more than 2,700 bikes to the Senegal population. Its aim consists in helping local people by giving bicycles to students, instead of walking kilometers to school, to improve their academic performance, promote employment and strengthen communities to them. Their baobikes system is locally managed. All in all, the most complicated was to change the white-man mentality, and understand and adapt to their local culture. Romà Boulé, the BSF responsible, affirms that they have received requests from other countries, but he remarks the need of local entities which know the area, and have enough technical knowledge and economic support for such a project.

Riding close to leaves?

Leave a reply

Riding a bike has direct impact in protecting environment and trees. The relation between bicycles and trees is expressed to a higher degree at the Bosland National Park (Belgium). Here, not only you can pedal close to trees, but also close to its leaves. This is due to a special bike line between Lommel, Hechtel-Eksen and Pelt known as Fietsen door de Bomen or Cyclign through the Trees. This massive bike circle has a slope of 3% – 4%, is 700 meters long and one 3 meters unidirectional line.

The perfect integration of this infrastructure and nature makes the experience magical. Its designers tell proud that they had in mind flora and fauna respect to determine the bike line. Additional technical issues like the use of minimal machine in the national park or the final ensemble were also put into practice. A metal mesh protects bikers from falling from the top of the bike line.

Paint only does nothing

Leave a reply

The other day I was on my way to buy some groceries when I saw something undesirable that I was expecting for some time.
I saw many cross calls in the past, but that day Is aw it first hand: bikes are force to cross over a bikeway in a non-standard way, and one bicycle was trapped beneath a car because the driver wasn’t paying attention.
Painting a bikeway is very flashy, but it doesn’t change anything if other users aren’t paying attention. Not to mention that over time that pain washes away. Plus this is not an standard crossing.
Some ideas for better solutions are keeping all crossings standard, making sure that turning cars don’t follow the same traffic light as the traffic going ahead, and keep bikeways physically separated from roads, especially at intersections.

PS: nobody suffered life threatening injuries, but the bicycle rear wheel and frame were destroyed.