Amsterdam Just Got Awesomer

when we moved to Amsterdam in 2018 Amsterdam Central was under construction in fact it seemed like Amsterdam Central was always under construction now I generally try not to go to the center of Amsterdam very often because it's basically Disneyland and yet also has too many cars somehow but I often go to Amsterdam Central to catch a train and so I've had to navigate construction projects many times over the past few years but now finally this construction is almost complete and a few days ago the most impressive part just opened up to the public there's been a lot of work done to the area around the Amsterdam Central Station in the past decade back in 2015 a much delayed project opened that made significant improvements to the station most importantly getting rid of this road that cut off the station from the Waterfront instead of a busy road there's now a shared space for people walking and cycling which mostly works though tourists do sometimes have trouble figuring it out the road now goes under the station and there's a spacious new area for buses on top that's much more accessible if you're transferring to or from a train and they even have this cool hardware for charging electric buses while they wait the bus station used to be here at the front of the station where this whole area was a sea of asphalt another great addition was this tunnel for walking and cycling that allows easy access through the station to the ferry terminal at the back I used to take this tunnel fairly regularly when I was working out of an office in Nord that is if I wasn't taking the m52 metro that day another great project that opened in 2018. connecting the north side of Amsterdam to the rest of the city with rapid transit for the first time the metro station itself is really spacious and modern and it's a pleasured ride though I am surprised that the Metros come only every six minutes that seems really infrequent for such a modern metro line and I hope they increase frequency in the future there are plans to extend this line to schipel airport in order to divert passengers from The Busy train system and allow more trains to run through Amsterdam South a station which is also seeing insane amounts of construction but that will have to be a topic for a future video back to Amsterdam Central the area in front of the station is much nicer these days with a very large pedestrian ice Plaza directly outside of the station and with this new entrance to the Metro there are several tram stops here too that can take you all over the city incidentally I really appreciate how well trams fit into an area like this there's no other form of surface Transit that is so compatible with pedestrian areas and it's one of the many reasons I love tram so much the fact that trams are on tracks makes them predictable so people aren't scared to walk here and it makes the area completely level so it's still Pleasant to walk and doesn't provide any obstacles for wheelchairs or mobility scooters either you really can't get this kind of shared environment with any other form of mass transit this wouldn't work as well with buses and you sure as hell can't do this with cars so while there's been a lot of construction in this area over the past decades the results have definitely been worth it but this new project takes it to another level I mentioned earlier that the bus station used to be in front of the station this made the front of the station very busy with cars and buses making the path treacherous for people walking one of the really nice Parts about this latest project is the amount of asphalt has been reduced as I mentioned the buses are now at the back but the road here is also narrower and has much less motor vehicle traffic but most importantly this was done by increasing the size of the water in front of the station you can see from these aerial images how the space devoted to Asphalt has been turned into more space for water and boats this makes the area in front of the station feel much larger and more inviting because one of the best things a city can do is to remove asphalt one of the glaring problems with Amsterdam Central however is the bicycle parking many years ago this ugly thing called the featsflott was built to park bicycles in a kind of outdoor bicycle parking garage this works okay but it really doesn't look that great the feat slot was built in 2001 and was supposed to be a temporary solution until 2004 but it's still here today and it's now well over capacity so the area in front of the station was littered with bicycles and the area behind the station too in the Netherlands almost 50 percent of train passengers arrive on bicycle and this station is no exception but that means that there have to be enough parking spaces for all those bicycles of course anybody that doesn't arrive at the station by car is an improvement so the bike parking has really been a victim of its own success but this is really not good enough for the busiest and most important train station in Amsterdam for example at Amsterdam South the third busiest station there are one two three underground parking garages and this last one opened in 2018 is absolutely stunning I use it on a regular basis even though the other two garages are technically closer to the station so when you see parking like that you can understand why this janky metal structure needed to be replaced and thankfully it has been with two beautiful new bicycle parking garages the first and most impressive opened up just a few days ago an underground bicycle parking garage in front of the station actually underground is not really correct here as it's actually under water this area which used to be the busy road and bus station is now mostly water and the garage was built under it I was invited to tour the garage with press the day before it opened to the public it was nice to go from being kicked out for filming to being toured around an offered champagne yep I've finally made it to the big time they also had these cakes with a fish riding a bicycle perfect for an underwater bicycle parking garage mark from bicycle Dutch was invited too so you'll see him in some of my shots be sure to check out his detailed review of this parking garage on his channel Link in the description and uh Chris from audacity was here too there were some speeches by politicians some important people got interviewed but anyway on to more important things the entrance to this new garage is wide and spacious with multiple travelators to bring you and your bike down under the fishes this is great because this garage is actually quite deep underwater and it would be a pain to have to walk in and out of it with your bike bicycle parking facilities are only worth building if people actually use them they have to be as easily accessible as possible otherwise people will just leave their bicycles parked on the surface instead so at the back of the garage there's an escalator that goes up here and it connects directly to the metro station and train station here so this can be even faster than parking on the surface and in case you're wondering no Amsterdam doesn't build underground garages where you can ride your bike into them because the city believes that they're too dangerous after a fatal accident at this one thing to note though is that there's no cover over this entrance I was told this was done to maintain the views of the historic station however these roll pods as they're called in Dutch get quite slippery when they're wet so most other garages have a cover and warning signs like this it does make me wonder if this new garage will be a slip and slide when it rains when you enter the garage there are these Fair Gates where you can tap your public transit card or bank card as with most bicycle parking garages in the Netherlands the first 24 hours is free and then it's usually a Euro and change for every day after that though I noticed that the price isn't mentioned on the signage which is a bit weird because it is at other garages in the city there is space to park up to 7 000 bicycles in this garage which makes it the largest in Amsterdam but not the largest in the Netherlands that title still goes to the one at utak as an irrelevant aside for bicycle parking instead of saying haraja as is done for cars the Dutch use the word stulling which literally translates as stabling like what is done for horses I wish we would call these bicycle stables in English too it's way more fun the rose have these LED lights that show how full a given row is and these lights won't all be green for long every row is labeled with a number so you can remember where you parked though curiously the racks themselves are not numbered like they are in most other Dutch bicycle garages what is typical though is that bicycles can be parked two levels High and the upper racks are spring-loaded to make it easy to lift your bicycle up there are sections with slightly larger racks too where bicycles with crates can be parked though one glaring Omission is that larger bicycles such as cargo bikes aren't allowed to park in this garage so I'm not entirely sure where you're supposed to park a buck feeds at Amsterdam Central now the staff just told me there will be an area on the east side this seems pretty typical in Amsterdam unfortunately the relatively new parking garage at the burst line was also not built to allow cargo bikes so they recently created this little area at the back where you can park a few Buck Feats and outside and at Amsterdam South only one of the three parking garages allows for buck feeds parking what is accounted for is ove feeds the public bicycles that can be rented by the day from most train stations in the Netherlands eventually this whole open area will be full of rental bikes these are fantastic when you're visiting a city by train but need to get around by bicycle when you get there I've used them many times in other cities and I should probably make a video about them someday and there's also a bike shop in case you need some repairs done to your bike or need to pick up some parts or accessories I went back to this parking garage on the first weekend that it was open and with so many people I noticed just how annoying these automated travelator warnings are inside the garage there were lots of people taking pictures and video this has become the newest Amsterdam tourist attraction so it goes without saying that this garage I mean bicycle stable is stunningly beautiful it's obvious that a lot of time effort and money has gone into designing it this bicycle parking isn't an afterthought it's not some small dark corner where they decided to stuff in some bicycle racks like you'll find in so many other countries people may ask how can they afford all this stuff but the real question is how can other cities afford not to cycling is considered to be first class infrastructure here because Amsterdam recognizes that every single person who shows up to the train station by bicycle is ultimately saving the city money and so it's encouraged as much as possible by being inviting functional but also beautiful that bicycle shop I mentioned has this glass wall where every square is a famous painting by Dutch artists and one wall of the garage is old maps of Amsterdam starting from about a thousand years ago and continuing to the present day they are also made up of paintings at the back of the garage are these sculptures which were designed in the 1960s they were preserved from a demolished building but they fit right in and the roof of the garage has these huge circular lights that document the nautical history of the Netherlands through historical paintings it's nice that infrastructure projects in the Netherlands almost always have an art budget that tunnel through the station that I showed earlier also has this artwork on the walls and I love this so much there are so many other cities I've lived in where public projects are designed as cheaply as possible with little or no thought as to how they'll actually look I am convinced that traveling through horribly ugly places on a regular basis takes a toll on your mental health and car infrastructure is inherently ugly and dehumanizing I strongly believe that there are benefits to Society for people to be regularly traveling to from and through places that are beautiful and I'm glad to live in a country that appreciates that too so that's the first garage and it's definitely impressive but there's actually a second bicycle parking garage that's still under construction that will open in a few weeks this second bicycle parking garage is underground not underwater located behind the station on the Riverside this is great for people approaching from the north side and the ferries across the river it's quite a bit simpler than the garage at the front of the station I mean don't get me wrong it's still really nice but it's not all full of fancy artwork either there's no travelator here so you have to bring your bike up the stairs like a goddamned animal but then this garage isn't very far underground so it's not very difficult either the building follows the curve of the river which makes it quite a bit more visually interesting than a rectangular box but since there are just several long rows the sections are labeled with words instead of row numbers and each rack is labeled to help you find your bicycle when you return and they were also playing music in here for some reason some Gangnam Style while you park your bicycle this garage is a great use of the long narrow space behind the station and I'm really looking forward to it opening so that maybe us maybe we can get a few years without construction at Amsterdam Central that is until the next time they decide to make it even awesomer if you'd like to see more about these parking garages be sure to check out the video that bicycle Dutch put together as he's seen a lot more of them than I have and if you'd like more notches bikes content consider subscribing to nebula I assume you've heard of nebula before but it's the creator-owned streaming platform where you can watch my content as well as videos from over 150 other creators all ad free and sponsor free you'll also find classes podcasts and lots of other content on nebula from many of your favorite educational creators these days I load nebula first before checking YouTube Because as a curated platform I know there's really no bad content on there and it has helped me find videos I'd otherwise never watch because the YouTube algorithm thinks I won't like it right now nebula is running a promotion where you can sign up for as little as 30 bucks a year which gives you full access to everything on nebula just use the special signup link go.nebula.tv not just bikes or click on the link in the description I'd also like to thank my supporters on nebula and patreon who pay me to make people jealous of our amazing bicycle Stables if you'd like to support this channel visit patreon.com not just bikes or nebula dot TV slash not just bikes

Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 2,311,581

Keywords: amsterdam, netherlands, urban planning, bicycle infrastructure, bike parking, public transit

Id: EqwasBTzZS8

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023