If you’ve accidentally parked your bike outside of a rack it’s probably been removed by the Gemeente
Translated by Thomas Ansell
The City of Groningen has a crack team of highly trained agents, all of whom have just one goal in life: to remove any bikes not in a designated bike rack. If you’ve parked your bike on, for example, the Folkingestraat recently, you might have come back to find a tag around the handlebars.
That means that Groningens fiets fairies have visited: and if you don’t move your bike they will load it into a van and remove it for you!
As reported by the GIC, the new depot for removed bikes is now the Damsterplein, just outside of the canal ring in the east of the city. Previously, bikes were put on the Ossenmarkt for people to come and reclaim, but the Ossenmarkt will shortly play host to a number of events.
The reason that Groningen’s city council is so keen to remove bikes not in racks is to make more room on pavements for people to keep up a 1.5-metre distance from eachother.
Bikes can be picked up from the Damsterplein Monday to Friday, 08:00-19:00, and on the weekends from 12:00 to 19:00. Or you can just head there anytime- since there are no fences to speak of.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
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