First part of the article:

New developments and opportunities for local authorities

“In the next few years everybody will be interested in Zutphen. There is an improvement in the railway station bicycle sheds going on and I believe and hope that it will evolve into a new trend.”

These are the words of Ben van Westing, manager of the NS Fiets, the department of the national railways of the Netherlands responsible for the welfare of cyclists. In October, near the railway station of Zutphen, a brand new free indoor bicycle shed will be built, giving lodge to 3,000 bicycles. It will be the first NS bike shed equipped with free surveillance and security. This trend of ‘free guarded sheds’ which has become immensely popular in the last year, is probably also carrying on to the NS-sheds.

Dirk Ligtermoet
Fietsverkeer (magazine of the Dutch Bicycle Council) October 2006

‘Free guarding at the NS railway stations’. It has been under discussion since the mid 90s. More frequently new plans came on the table discussing that bigger stations can no longer build the bicycle sheds outdoor and on the ground level so that there is space in front of the entrance for an unguarded bicycle shed. The plans were not received very well as many people thought that such a chaotic bicycle mass did not look very elegant. In many cases there was a lack of space for storing all the bicycles. So if it is not possible to build the bicycle shed in front of the building, then there is no other solution than building them indoors, preferably subterranean. After all, a bicycle shed should be on a walking distance from the railway station. Social security, however, agrees that there should be supervisors when the bikes are stalled indoors. Now, doesn’t a bike shed with supervisors look like a guarded bike shed? The idea was that when ‘unguarded with supervising’ remains costless then the guarded shed would experience great concurrence resulting in a shortage of bicycle spots, which was feared by many.

Difficult conversations

In several projects this fear was a motive for villages to go and talk to NS about a better tuning between, or even combination of, the guarded and the (future indoor) sheds. For many years these conversations have been difficult. Local lower rates were rejected by NS because NS-sheds were supposed to remain a rural formula. Offering the guarded part for free as well was negotiable but in a hardly realistic way. To a great extend the decrease in turnover that has to be paid off was too expensive for the counties. In the railway station of Leiden Central, for example, the distinction between guarded and unguarded was clearly separated.
In Apeldoorn a new subterranean bicycle shed is under construction for which the county is paying as well (ca. £ 2,7 million of the £ 6 million construction expenses). It is in fact in Apeldoorn, the town that lobbies for ‘free guarding’, where the idea of making that subterranean bicycle shed for free originated. Wim Mulder, official of the county of Apeldoorn declares that ‘very soon it became obvious that the annual turnover that we were to compensate, was too high for us. These sums were not in proportion to the sum that the exploitation of all free guarded sheds will be costing us.’