Allan´s Weblog

City living is troublesome sometimes.

Don't take me wrong, I like the city a lot. I like the hustle and bustle, the light and the traffic, the art and culture and all the possibilities coming with the territory.

But there are drawbacks!

Traffic is one of the major drawbacks. Jams, noise and pollution. Everybody knows that - and every city dweller is aware of that.

But my city presents a problem not known to every city. Parking - and not only the parking of cars. In fact I think the parking of bicycles makes more inconvenience to the city dwellers than most other things.
Bicycles tend to be everywhere - and mainly where they are not supposed to be. In front of Central Station, in narrow residential streets and in some squares they occupy almost all available space on sidewalks. The result is, that mothers with prams, wheel chair users and blind people find it very hard to make their way through town. Sometimes dangerous situations occur when ordinary pedestrians are forced to walk on the actual road in order to pass the heaps of bikes piled up on the sidewalk.

To cope with the problem, City Hall has made parking buildings for bicycles and other dedicated spaces for them. But in vain - it seems like the better the parking conditions are, the more people go by bicycle and the unauthorized parking is still the same.

The latest attempt to cope with the problem is bicycle parking in layers - as shown on the below photo.



It looks good - for the time being. I anticipate though, that in a few weeks when everybody knows about this system, the piling up of bicycles will be just as chaotic here as in so many other places in my city.

Seems like a hard case to solve. Reminds me of the problem with congested roads. The more motorways you build, the more cars will use them and make new jams just weeks after opening the new road.