City bikes in Amsterdam, how many are there?

Bicycle Eldorado - city bikes have triumphed over cars?

It's estimated that there are slightly fewer city bikes than residents (around 1 million bike owners, plus about 100,000 who can't or don't want one). Most of us, even those who have never been to Amsterdam, have a mental image of a city dominated by cycling. Perhaps rivaled only by Copenhagen, the capital of the Netherlands is considered the most bicycle-friendly city in the world . It turns out that this idyllic image doesn't quite align with reality. Thanks to the activists at Cycle Space Amsterdam, however, this is about to change...

The mayor on a bike

Amsterdam is the first city in the world to officially appoint a bicycle mayor. This position is neither political nor strictly administrative, though it is paid from public funds. Like the "Night Mayor" (yes, they have one too, and his task is to reconcile the conflicting interests of those who want to spend their nights partying with those who would rather sleep in. The issue is not trivial, as the turnover of clubs and pubs is not insignificant for the city's budget...), the Bike Mayor (real name: Anna Luten) aims to work towards compromise solutions that will ensure a more harmonious development of the city for cyclists. It turns out that Amsterdam makes a great impression on tourists observing the crowds of city bikes everywhere, but it faces numerous challenges related to the lack of infrastructure, technology, and solutions that will improve traffic (not just for bikes – it turns out that a significant problem is the difficulty in building a denser network of bridges over the canals, which are crucial for transportation) and make it safer for everyone (including pedestrians, who have reason to worry about their safety in this beautiful place). What's also incredibly interesting about this whole story is how naive and far-fetched opinions can often be about phenomena that (supposedly) easily lend themselves to observation without scientific training. All in all, Poles are not geese... for a long time now, the Mayor's Plenipotentiary for Cycling has been doing a great job in Warsaw, but one can only dream... A Cycling President or Mayor sounds better than a plenipotentiary :)