The organisation for shop and business owners in the Groningen city centre, the Groningen City Club (GCC), wants part of the city centre to be turned into a bike free zone.
According to Erik Bos, chairman of the GCC, the many thousands of parked bicycles make Groningen less attractive for visitors and residents, and are a growing problem in Groningen’s pedestrian areas.
“Take the south side of the Vismarkt, for example. As a pedestrian, you almost trip over all the parked bikes there”, he says. And it’s not just a nuisance to visitors and residents: the bike congestion also presents problems to emergency services.
Completely banning bikes from certain busy areas, like the Vismarkt, Grote Markt and Herestraat, could be a solution to the problem, according to the GCC . To prevent other parts of the city becoming overrun by parked bicycles, the GCC wants large bike parking facilities to be built on the edges of these bike free zones.
