Lately The Netherlands has created an underwater parking lot for 7,000 bicycles at Amsterdam Central Station.. The huge structure opened last Wednesday (25) has room for 6300 personal bikes and another 700 for shared bikes.

According to The Verge, a new four-year project worth 60 million euros (approximately 330 million reais) has been undertaken to facilitate the first or last mile of rail traffic, and by all indications, capacity will be expanded to 11,000 bikes with the opening of the second garage from February this year.

While this seems like overkill in many countries, this type of garage is par for the course in the Netherlands as the country gradually replaces cars with greener options like bicycles. It is worth noting that the city of Utrecht already has an even larger underground (but not underwater) bike garage that can accommodate 12,000 bikes.
According to data about 35% of Amsterdam residents use bicycles daily.. In Utrecht this number increases to 50% of residents.

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Underwater parking construction

To build the underwater garage, workers first drained water in front of the station to insert the garage floor and install giant columns to support the underwater roof.

Approximately 200,000 travelers arrive at Amsterdam Central Station daily by train, ferry, tram, bus and metro. And of these travelers, half arrive by bike. Thus, cyclists left them parked in kiosks located at the station itself, which made the space unorganized and also facilitated theft.

There is a garage free for the first 24 hours, then each additional day costs 1.35 euros (about 7.46 reais). To get to the parking entrance, users can follow the bike path at street level.

To enter the site, travelers must swipe an OV-chipkaart (a bank-linked Dutch transport card) or have a bike tag called a Fietstag.

Check out the slow motion footage of the construction of the underwater bike rack at Amsterdam Central Station below.

How do you feel about underwater bike parking in Amsterdam? Participate in the comments with your opinion.

The “caiçara” electric bike gets a version that reaches speeds of up to 32 km/h with a range of 64 km.

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The bike was developed in collaboration with the French company Douze Cycles.

Source: Edge

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