Image Credit: Ben Ross

1. Background

Amsterdam: Europe’s cycling capital, has turned to a novel approach to meet rising demand for bicycle parking. With its population at 810,000, the Dutch city currently has 881,000 bicycles on its roads, but here’s a kicker, only 400,000 designated parking lots. ( Marszal, A. 2015, February 15. Amsterdam to build underwater parking for bicycles after running out of space. The Telegraph. Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) To combat this problem, the city has officially declared its intentions to excavate and construct bicycle parking space beneath its waterfront to provide an additional 7000 lots. That’s right, its not underground but underwater.

2. Critique of Impact:

This venture will be a great boon for environmentalists. By constructing more bicycle parking lots, Amsterdam is in effect actively promoting the use of bicycles as residents who might have been dissuaded by the lack of parking options would hence be encouraged to forsake the use of automobiles – which have negative impacts on the environment due to their consumption of diesel and emitting of greenhouse gases – for bicycles which do not leave a carbon footprint in their wake.

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