€220m will not solve Dutch train station bike parking chaos, says railway company

Am I the only one to spot this in the article..."noting the country’s improving economy and its correlation with the swelling cyclist numbers."

So! The more affluent people become, the more likely they are to ride a bike. I must remember this next time a car driver asks me if I want HIM to buy ME a car. My reply will now be "No thanks, Mate! Haven't you heard? Only poor people drive cars!"

I agree with Belaroo,

It s simple matter of zoning that councils pursue, keeping places of employment and residential places apart. This all made sense when the workplaces were dirty factories, but since a lot of that has since been exported a better integration of residential, commercial and light industrial units would reduce the need for travel.

For what it's worth I pay a premium to live in the center of Manchester and as a result can commute by bike to all of it, safe in the knowledge that I'll never need a car.

Holland's got the same problem that too many people can't live where they work and therefore spend a good deal of time travelling by train or driving to work (you should see their mega motorways jammed up with cars every day - it's not a side they talk about much).
Given Dutch infrastructure, why still do so many use cars? it's still a massive problem and outside the bigger cities, most families still need a car, even if they don't use it quite as much as we do.
I've always maintained I will live where I work and not commute, when I broke that rule, I spent 2 hours next to my husband driving 12 miles because, the road was too dangerous to cycle and for two of us it was much cheaper than getting the train. I only took the job because there were no jobs where we could afford to live and it was where my husband worked so we could travel together.
Just like the UK, the Dutch need to look at how they can make not commuting so far more attractive.
We make travelling seem like the only option, there must be a better way.

Holland's got the same problem that too many people can't live where they work and therefore spend a good deal of time travelling by train or driving to work (you should see their mega motorways jammed up with cars every day - it's not a side they talk about much).
Given Dutch infrastructure, why still do so many use cars? it's still a massive problem and outside the bigger cities, most families still need a car, even if they don't use it quite as much as we do.
I've always maintained I will live where I work and not commute, when I broke that rule, I spent 2 hours next to my husband driving 12 miles because, the road was too dangerous to cycle and for two of us it was much cheaper than getting the train. I only took the job because there were no jobs where we could afford to live and it was where my husband worked so we could travel together.
Just like the UK, the Dutch need to look at how they can make not commuting so far more attractive.
We make travelling seem like the only option, there must be a better way.

Solution is clear, they need to get more people off bike and into cars.

I work in Haarlem sometimes and they built an underground bike park under the station, its very impressive, I bet this cost a lot of dosh but is a nice way of solving the issue,

Unless you have been there and seen it you just cannot believe how many bikes are parked around, I think its fantastic what they have achieved, to me its a nice problem to have.

Sometimes I wish I were Dutch

#dutchproblems

Simple solution: stop charging people to take their bikes on trains and provide enough on- train spaces, then they won't park bikes at both ends of their train journeys and taker up two spaces.

220 million Euro is nothing to a country like the Netherlands. What's their annual budget for road maintenance?

At heart the problem is that rather like Britain their trying to retrofit the infrastructure.

I guess the cycling equivalent of the 'firstworldproblems' tag would be 'Dutchproblems'.

Why can't they simply design a bike that's able to carry 4 or 5 people? Put a roof and maybe some protective panels around the cyclists and if needed and, because of all the extra weight, they could even add an engine of some sort to help them move around more easily. They could puut in more comfortable seats and add various devices to help relieve the boredom while they're travelling.
I have seen the future.

Cycle paths too crowded? Why not paint some roads blue?

I am not sure our authorities would even recognise that there was a problem! Either that, or a discount supply of Nelson's Eyes seems to have been issued to all Councils.

Perhaps we could offer them some of our expertise on these infrastructure problems?