Cycle parking - a passion-filled debate or a dull technical topic? Surprising ECF's Development Director Kevin Mayne, his personal musings on cycle parking sparked a flurry of social media activity last week. Cycle parking remains a hot topic in the cycling world and Utrecht's top cycle parking planner will be at Velo-city Global 2014 in Adelaide.

Cycle parking is always one of the biggest discussion points at every Velo-city Conference, challenging city officials, employers and cycling advocates to meet a demand that always seems to be ahead of everybody’s plans. Velo-city Global 2014 in Adelaide is dedicating a session to cycling parking which includes a talk by Anita Dirix from the City of Utrecht, one of the Netherlands cycle parking experts, along with other international speakers.

The current street level cycle parking in Utrecht is to be replaced by the world’s biggest underground cycle park holding 13,000 bikes in a brand new installation under the city hall. This video shows the scale of the project:

Judging by the reaction to an article by ECF’s Development Director Kevin Mayne about Utrecht cycle parking, the dedicated cycle parking session looks like it will be one of the “must-see” events of Velo-city. Kevin writes a blog about his cycling travels and personal reflections about cycle culture called I Do Not Despair (www.idonotdespair.com).  Last week he wrote a story called “Utrecht station cycle parking is absolutely astonishing. See it before it disappears underground” which was his reaction to the mass cycle parking around Utrecht Station which he found when visiting ECF’s Netherlands member group Fiestersbond.

An ocean of bikes, Utrecht. (Kevin Mayne)

A few hours later he published a quote from the article and the picture above on Twitter “In Utrecht I saw a sea of bikes. In fact no I didn’t, I saw an ocean of bikes.” Within minutes the article had taken off on Twitter and was being retweeted by the Dutch cycling community and residents of Utrecht. A few hours it was reported as “Trending” on Dutch Twitter and had made local news.

Kevin says “At the start of the article I wondered whether people could get as excited about cycle parking as I did when I saw the huge numbers of bikes in Utrecht”. He continues “We know that parking challenges every city but is even more important in successful cycling cities. Their solutions and their cycling culture clearly gives great pride to Utrechters, I am pleased they liked the observations of a visitor.“

The social media debate also took some highly entertaining twists. Numerous contributors were trying to imagine that number of parked cars but the best debate was about the challenge of finding your bike. Kevin suggested that he would use a flag because a lot of the bikes look the same but he was told in no uncertain terms that would prove he was a tourist. Evert Albers (Twitter @evert_) won the argument by establishing that the Dutch have a special find your bike gene.  “It's comparable with salmons going back to their native streams, but with less grizzlies along the way”.