Bicycle Parking Guidance System in Utrecht | Hacker News Reader

Bicycle Parking Guidance System in Utrecht

bicycledutch.wordpress.com

84 pointsPieSquared25 comments

It may also interest people here that the guidance system is written in Haskell. I originally saw this on Reddit, where one of the authors provides a bit more information on the technical aspects of the system [0].

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/3959r0/haskellbased...

Thanks. I thought I noticed a Haskell logo sticker on that developer's laptop in the photo...

That's me and my laptop :-)

As I mentioned in the reddit comments we're using Haskell for most parts of the system (frontend via GHCJS, web application servers, protocol implementations). For dev-ops we use the Nix ecosystem: NixOS & nixops.

They also showed some outside parking places. Security is not a problem inside but what about outside? Do the cameras serve a dual role, is the bike insured against theft?

Most of the time cameras are present.

They use cameras for counting free spaces as they mention in the video. Nothing is said about security. Having cameras does not mean you have actual recording and surveillance.

Actually, from the article, the opposite is expressly mentioned: ..."The sensors look like cameras, but the images are not captured or saved, so the cyclist’s privacy is not violated.”

(I'm the CTO of LumiGuide who developed this system).

We're currently not using the system for video surveillance. Images from the cameras are only stored in memory for a short period of time while being processed by our CV algorithm.

However, since bicycle theft is a common theme in the Netherlands, there's strong interest from municipalities for using our system for video surveillance. So we're now researching how to extend our system for doing that.

Great! I hope you succeed.

All things considered, preventing theft via active physical structure, vs pursuing a thief AFTER the theft occurred seems to be preferable no?

Ask New Yorkers or Londoners how well video surveillance helps prevent or catch thieves..

[1] http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3024/5859909526_af35d1a4de_z....

[2] http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/wave-by-joe-mattley....

[3] http://www.landscapeonline.com/products/images/prod_baa1e255...

No, bikes are almost never insured against theft, that's the person's own responsibility (lock and chain), and even then sometimes you're just out of luck. Having your bike stolen is one of the experiences every Dutchman has to go through. That's also why there's a huge secondhand / cheap bike trade, or why you won't see much expensive bikes in the big cities like that. And for the few kilometers (if that) between your house and a train station, you don't really need anything fancy either.

I can lock the bike almost anywhere anyway, I thought this would help protect it.

I don't see any reason to use this service.

The bike parking lots are generally located in extremely convenient places such as next to train stations, or near large squares. In the Netherlands, there are a lot of places that you can't park your bike, unlike in the US where you can just lean it against a wall. As you can see in the video, most of these parking lots feature the double level racks. It was hard for me to understand why this was necessary before I moved here from the US, but if you ever travel to the Netherlands, you will be amazed by the amount of bicycles. Being able to fit 2x as many bicycles in the same square footage is 100% necessary.

You can lock your bike however you want, but any experienced thief can remove those locks within minutes. No reasonable priced combination of locks keeps a thief from taking your bike.

Luckily there are so many bikes in Utrecht and Amsterdam and especially around Central Station (10-20k), that chances that they take your bike are really low. Then if you use a good lock, one that takes an extra minute to break, and if you put your bike in a good location, you're relatively safe.

Interesting. Certain animals use herding, the same strategy, against predators.

Yep, that's exactly my strategy!

However, this works opposite by not hiding in the mass. The thief hides in the mass, as bikes themselves don't flee the scene when a thief is in sight. So the trick is to find a good place for my bike. As I have a fragile racing bike (old and cheap but technically in good condition), those massive outdoors parking systems are not good places. People pull and push to get their bikes out, and a racing bike wouldn't survive that for long. So I find places where my bike is safe.

It's always fun to see that I park my bike in an empty spot, and after an hour or so the space if filled with other bikes.

During my student days, I always made sure to check if the bike rack had a bike that looked prettier than mine and had worse locks.

Now that I ride a much more expensive cargo bike, I don't worry about it anymore, and it hasn't been stolen yet. Are cargo bikes less attractive? Hard to believe, but it seems to work.

"I can lock the bike almost anywhere anyway" ...

Yeah, good luck with that near eg. a dutch train station ;-)

http://media.nu.nl/m/m1oxconajm5k_wd1280.jpg/bouw-grootste-f...

Other views of that area:

https://www.google.nl/search?q=800m+bikes+utrecht&ie=utf-8&o...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfQsFgc3Xt0 (other side of the station)

Not at a busy train station in Holland.

200+ bikes are removed per day at Amsterdam's central train station for being parked outside of the designated bicycle parking areas (e.g. sidewalks, bridges, alongside the walls of the station). Even within the designated areas, you usually have to be parked in a bike rack or your lock will be cut and the bike removed.

At busy stations it would be great to know which one of the designated spots you should bike towards. Biking farther away and walking for 3 minutes is much better than guessing incorrectly, searching for a spot for 10 minutes, and still having to walk for three minutes... especially when you need to catch a train!

Great argument. My country is much more relaxed when it comes to bike parking ( and stealing unfortunately ).

Probably because your country doesn't have as many bikes as Netherland does.

In most places in Netherland, parking wherever you like is no big deal, but there are places (train stations in particular) where bikes really need to be restricted, or there'd be no room for anything other than bikes.

It's the same as with cars: the occasional randomly parked car is not a big problem, but once you've got thousands of cars being parked all over the place, it becomes time to restrict them to designated parking spots. It's no different with bikes, except you need a lot more bikes to get to the point where they become a problem. Dutch cities have that many bikes.

I live in Utrecht and I think it's a waste of taxpayer's money. Too complicated solution for a simple problem.

What's the simpler solution?

I'm from Utrecht as well I think this is great ☺

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