The importance of bicycle parking management

Encouraging cycling to make cities more liveable, healthy and sustainable has been very effective in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark (Pucher & Buehler, 2008). In these countries cycling is not limited to recreation or utilitarian purposes, but used for a wide range of daily activities (Pucher & Buehler, 2008). It is the opinion of the authors based on recent reports and articles in newspaper that this intensive use also has a backside: bike parking facilities are lacking or have too limited capacity, for example around (Dutch) train stations,1 shopping malls and sports centres and the consequences of lacking bike parking management are underestimated, for example in the city centres of Delft,2 The Hague,3 Utrecht4 and Copenhagen5. Many scholars have written on the aspects of improving bike ability, on biking policies, on mode choice, on route choice and on the perception and attitude of bikers. Bike parking is one of the core aspects for all of these subjects. Nevertheless, bike parking and the issues around stations, shopping malls and in city centres are hardly mentioned. This paper describes the issues raised in the Netherlands and Denmark recently.