Amsterdam Built a Badass (and Brilliant) Underwater Bike Garage

Amsterdam has long had a problem of people dumping bikes in the canals in the city. But now, people will be able to park their bikes underwater—and actually get them back—thanks to an innovative new underwater bike parking area. The city is hoping to ease bike parking congestion (yes, it’s a real problem there!) by adding thousands of bike parking spots under Amsterdam’s Central Station.

The parking lot is set to open on January 26 and feature free bike parking for up to 24 hours, with inexpensive long term options available as well. With easy access to the Central Station for those who need to commute by bus or train, plus easy on-foot access to work in the bustling part of the city.

“It’s great that people can jump on their bikes, get to the station and get on their journey seamlessly,” said Jeroen Wienen, a spokesperson for ProRail, said of the project in an interview with The Guardian. “The Netherlands is a real cycling country, a lot of people come to the station by bike, and we and the municipality certainly don’t want all those bikes lying around.”

Amsterdam has long struggled with how to handle so many bikes, and they’ve gone vertical with bike parking in the past:

This new underwater station took several years and more than 60 million Euros to build, and the city actually documented the process in this fascinating video:

To build the garage, a lake had to be drained to make room for the underwater/underground storage facility, but when you live in a country where there are more bikes than people, finding a place to store them all is pretty darn important. In fact, another facility for an extra 4,000 bikes—cheaper at only 25 million Euros to build—also recently opened near the North-South metro line in Amsterdam. (That's right: In recent years, the city invested 85 million Euros in bike parking alone!)

And perhaps more important that simply adding bike storage was the concept of closing the gap between cycling and train travel. Making the two more seamless allows more people to pedal to the train station, rather than driving to work. These connections are becoming more important for cities, as commuters look for ways to lessen their carbon footprints and cut commuting costs without spending all day on the bike.

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