Bikes are great, but can you hit the point of too many bikes? While Amsterdam loves its bicyclists, city officials there say they may have reached the saturation point. The morning and evening commutes have traffic jams of bikes, people are getting into accidents and there is nowhere to park all the bikes. In a city with more water than pavement, that leads to locking bikes to any open light post, bench or drinking fountain that can be found. A ferry that is no longer used was even anchored near the harbor to park bikes on.Amsterdam has a population of 800,000, and an estimated 880,000 bicycles, four times the number of cars! To put that in perspective though, can you imagine if the city had the same amount of cars? It would be an even bigger mess.
So what's the answer? The New York Times takes a look at the issues and city leader's ideas to deal with it.
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