Ah Europe, the land of amazing pastries, even better art, and nice, walkable streets. So walkable you’d be a fool to drive, especially in some of the older cities that didn’t have their bits completely rearranged in WWII, like Amsterdam. Still, foolish tourists are going to act like foolish tourists. This is an impassioned plea to you to skip the rental car and take bikes everywhere instead.
In Amsterdam only about 40% of households own a car, but cars still line every street along painfully narrow roads, and the city only contains 432,000 parking spaces, according to Planetizen. And the city is more likely to remove parking spaces than build any new ones. By this year, Amsterdam hopes to hit 10,000 parking spaces decimated. That’s hardly enough for the actual residents of Amsterdam, let alone car-renting tourists. Should you actually manage to find parking, expect to pay out the nose for it; parking in the city center runs 7.50 euros an hour, or around $8.69 as of this writing.
Go native
While a minority of people own cars, bikes actually outnumber the population of Amsterdam. The city streets are continuously geared towards moving more people via bikes and walking than via cars because it just makes more sense in the city. According to a DutchAmsterdam, 780,559 people live in the city, and they own an estimated 881,000 bikes. Emergency services report scooping between 12,000 and 15,000 of them out of the almost 60 miles of canals.
“We are really struggling with space in Amsterdam,” Melanie Ter Horst, the city’s deputy mayor told Euronews. “We don’t have enough space for everyone to get from A to B. And that’s why we need to make more space for cyclists and pedestrians.”
The reliance on pedaled travel has led to city streets that are fairly confusing for international tourists trying to navigate the city by car. Not only are they contending with no parking and roads designed to protect bicyclists, but you also have a tram system providing public transit on these same narrow street. If you’re someone who absolutely needs a car while on vacation, Amsterdam is the epitome of “if you don’t build it, they won’t come.” The premium on space has forced Amsterdam’s city planners to rethink parking infrastructure entirely. In 2018, Amsterdam built a parking garage that can contain 600 cars right under a canal. In 2023, bicyclist got their own dedicated underwater parking garage in the heart of downtown Amsterdam. Bicycle parking is just the better investment, it’s why Holland has the largest bike garages in the world.