An underwater bike garage that is next-level cycling infrastructure

The Dutch city of Amsterdam spent €60 million to create a parking structure that can store 7,000 bicycles in a submerged facility at the city’s central train station

From on-street bicycle parking to 2 new NS bicycle parking facilities. Around Amsterdam's Central Station there are a total of 4 bicycle parking facilities where you can park your bike for free every first 24 hours. Picture: www.amsterdam.nl

While the Netherlands is already internationally famous for its excellent bicycle infrastructure, the new bike garage just opened in Amsterdam arguably takes the Dutch cycle obsession to a new level.

Capable of holding up to 7,000 bikes and built at a cost of €60 million, the facility at Amsterdam’s central station isn’t the largest bike garage in the country. It does, however, have a very unique feature: It is located entirely underwater.

Amsterdam Municipality says the new bicycle parking spaces will give pedestrians more space around Amsterdam Central Station: "In the weeks after the opening, all bicycle racks slowly disappear from the street and we only park in the now 4 NS parking facilities. Without bike racks, the street is easier to keep clean, it is tidy, uncluttered and safe"

The garage, which opened in at the end of January, is part of a wider revamp of the grand but extremely busy space in front of Amsterdam Centraal, the city’s main train station. Referred to locally as De Entree (because it is where rail passengers — and before them, ship passengers — enter the city), this sweeping space abutting the city’s harbor has been overhauled since 2017. Above ground, space has been taken from cars and given to pedestrians and bikes, while some roads have been cleared away to allow more room for the site’s defining feature: water.

Overturning changes made in the 20th century, harbor water now flows around the entirety of the historic central station, which was built on artificial islands. Underground, meanwhile, the area has gained a new metro station, first opened in 2018. The new bike garage, accessed from ground level via a curving ramp, is the last piece of the reconfiguration to be completed.

De grootste fietsenstalling 🚲🚲🚲 van onze stad opent eind januari de deuren. Om de stalling te bouwen moest het water worden weggepompt uit het Open Havenfront. Bekijk 4️⃣ jaar werk in 6️⃣0️⃣ seconden. pic.twitter.com/J1GJM6PYmZ

— Gemeente Amsterdam (@AmsterdamNL) January 13, 2023

As seen in the time-lapse film that the city recently tweeted, the effort put into the garage’s creation is truly impressive. Before construction began, engineers had to dam the entries to the basin from Amsterdam Harbor and pump the sealed-off area dry. Layers of sand were dredged before the basin’s edges were reinforced with concrete walls. Then the garage’s floor was laid and planted with a labyrinth of columns, shipped to the site by barge, to support the roof before water could refill the basin, completely inundating the submerged parking facility.

Throughout this four-year-long process, routes from the city to the station — which sees 200,000 rail and subway passengers daily — remained open and unblocked.

Between them 2 new bicycle parking facilities that have been built underwater can accommodate around 11,000 bicycles. Pictures: www.amsterdam.nl

Pouring this much effort and money into a garage for bicycles might seem incredible by international standards, but not in the Netherlands. Major underground bike garages at transit stations are increasingly common throughout the country. The largest — with a capacity of more than 12,000 two-wheelers — is in the country’s fourth-largest city of Utrecht, where a 51% percent modal share for bikes makes Amsterdam’s 32% seem fairly modest. The facilities have spread nationally because Dutch cities are focusing on a crucial consideration needed to get more journeys carried out by bike: extending the possibilities for climate-friendly car-free travel by making the connections between cycling infrastructure and rail transit as seamless as possible.

Een kijkje in de nieuwe (en grootste) fietsenstalling van onze stad! 🚲 Deze is vandaag geopend en ligt aan de centrumkant van het Centraal Station.

↔️In totaal is hier ruimte voor 7.000 fietsen.

📅Op 28 januari vieren we de vernieuwing van het Stationseiland. Ben jij er bij?🎉 pic.twitter.com/HIvJ9NelTf

— Gemeente Amsterdam (@AmsterdamNL) January 25, 2023

“Data from Amsterdam and the Netherlands’ urban region shows that there is far more to reducing car trips than just focusing on bicycles,” says Meredith Glaser, executive director of the Amsterdam-based Urban Cycling Institute. “To reduce car dependency, you need bikes plus a high-capacity, high-efficiency, high-frequency public transit system.”

The facility at Amsterdam's Central Station was built at a cost of €60 million and is capable of holding up to 7,000 bikes

By making it easier to park and store bikes securely at the station, Amsterdam is encouraging more travelers to ride to trains, both for daily commuting and longer out-of-town trips. Low fees sweeten the deal further: Using a spot in the garage is free for the first 24-hour stretch, then €1.35 per day thereafter.

Parking for around 11,000 bicycles is accessed from ground level via a curving ramp. Pictures: www.amsterdam.nl

Dutch bike parking facilities have another key role to play: They help keep street-parked bikes from strangling the city. As any visitor to Amsterdam Centraal can testify, the station’s environs already bristle with cycles so numerous that their sheer volume makes a popular photo op for tourists. Rack spaces are often hard to come by across the city, with streetlamps and signposts routinely ringed with bikes that end up obstructing walkways. The inconvenience this poses may be small compared to the danger and pollution created by cars, but in a city of narrow, crowded streets, sidewalk clutter can block wheelchair users and force pedestrians into the bike lane — a habit that drives Amsterdammers crazy.

Park your bike for free for for 24 hours at one of the new underground bicycle parking facilities in Amsterdam

So while spending €60 million on an underwater bike garage might still seem like an impossible luxury for most cities, in Amsterdam it’s more like a sound infrastructure investment. “It’s a drop in the bucket compared to investments for highway expansions,” Glaser says, “not to mention the societal public health costs of congestion, car crashes and car dependency.”

— Bloomberg