Maybe one day flying cars and jetpacks will be the hallmarks of futuristic cities, but today, in 2023, it’s huge underwater bike racks like the one that just opened at Amsterdam Central Station. The structure has space for 6,300 personal bikes and 700 more for shared bikes to facilitate the first or last mile of train travel. Capacity will expand to 11,000 bikes when a second garage opens in February.
The four-year, 60 million-euro (about $65 million) project may seem outlandish to anyone outside the Netherlands, but it’s business as usual for Dutch cities, which are slowly but methodically transforming personal cars into relics of a misguided past, a time when cities were built around the needs of cars, not people. Hell, there’s an even bigger underground (but not submarine) bicycle garage in the city of Utrecht, with a capacity for 12,000 two-wheelers. In a country where bicycles easily outnumber citizens, the data consistently shows about 35 percent of Amsterdam residents use their bikes daily, which rises to 50 percent of Utrecht residents.
A time-lapse released by the City of Amsterdam shows the construction of this engineering marvel. Workers first had to drain the water in front of the 19th-century station before laying the garage floor and installing giant columns, shipped in by barge, to support the roof that would eventually submerge.
An estimated 200,000 commuters arrive at Amsterdam Central Station every day by train, ferry, tram, bus and metro; approximately half arrive by bicycle. Traditionally, they parked in many of the messy above-ground bike stands that still surround the station and are scheduled to be removed in the coming weeks. While the largest of these is so massive that it has become a tourist attraction in its own right, they are considered by locals to be smelly monuments of frustration that often lack clearance due to the sheer number of semi-abandoned bikes. As a result, regular commuters risk being impounded by securing their bikes to nearby trees, streetlights, and signposts, or by leaving them on any available concrete slab, increasing the chance of theft.
For now at least, the new underwater parking structure I visited is immaculate and emits serious 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes. It only opened on Wednesday and was only used sparingly on Thursday when I visited. Inside the 24-hour-managed facility, I saw perhaps a few hundred personal bikes and several dozen OVFiets bike-shares available for pay. Importantly, I also saw a hard-working daily cleaning crew and a handful of friendly employees ready to explain how everything works.
Parking in the garage is free for the first 24 hours, then €1.35 (about $1.46) for each additional day. That’s convenient for commuters and a great motivator for people to check out their bikes quickly. To enter, you need to swipe your OV-chipkaart (Dutch transport card linked to your bank) or have a Fietstag (“bike tag”) fitted to your bike. The chip tag is free to subscribers and only took two minutes to request and process once inside the garage.
A street-level bike path takes you directly to the above-ground entrance to the underwater garage, which is marked with a large blue sign and bike logo, making it visible from a good distance. The sign shows the number of parking spots still available (when I got there it said 5792 in illuminated green numbers), allowing you to find alternative parking if it’s full. Here, you jump off and walk or stand on a pair of treadmills that descend below the waterline, bringing you to the entrance to the parking lot.
Since my bike was equipped with a new Fietstag, I was able to get through the so-called “entry and exit zone” without delay. Others will need to tap their OV-chipkaart on the clearly marked spot below the screen. The surrounding lights turn green and the screen says: “Fiets ingecheckt!” (Bike Registered!) to let you know you can continue.
Red and green lights on the vertical columns inside the garage make it easy to see which rows of bike racks still have open spaces available. Everything was green during my visit. You can take any available space to park your bike. Once parked, an escalator at the far end of the garage provides direct access to Amsterdam Central Station.
The underground garage is an engineering marvel, but it’s not without its flaws. For starters, there is no designated parking for bulky cargo bikes, which are very common in Amsterdam for families with small children. There are also no charging points for electric bikes, which is a real oversight in a country where more than half of the new bikes sold are electric.
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You also can’t check in with a smartphone, smartwatch, or debit card currently. Tourists with a rental bike or anyone else without an OV-chipkaart can ask an attendant for a loaner pass to check in and out.
And as someone who leaves my bike parked outside overnight, I’m not too keen on leaving the Fietstag permanently on my bike. It can be easily stolen and used by anyone to surreptitiously enter or exit the garage, and all bills are automatically charged to my account.
However, these are such small details that I am almost embarrassed to mention them. But modern cities like Amsterdam only got to this point through decades of continuous improvement. The project around the Central Station could have started in 2019, but its foundations were laid a long time ago.
Amsterdam’s metamorphosis from car-centric city to multimodal wonderland began in the 1970s with the help of locals and enlightened politicians who, in concert, demanded a more livable city. Cars still exist and are necessary, but private ownership is discouraged in favor of clean and reliable car sharing services that receive preferential treatment. Replacing private cars with electric versions that require the same space and spend more than 90 percent of their time idle won’t help move cities into the future.
Of course, not all cities can be like Amsterdam. But even new bike cities like Paris have shown that if you build the lanes, the bikers will come. And you have to start somewhere.
All photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge