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Comment by Vinnl | Hacker News Reader

The Dutch railways have offered ridiculously cheap bicycle rentals by almost every station for years now, and it's so helpful. No need to plan travel times, just tap your card and go.

Of course this also requires proper bicycle infrastructure to be available, but it shows how well this could work.

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I rented one of those in Amsterdam then rode the beautiful tree-lined path along canals to Utrecht one day. I then rode back with the bike to Amsterdam. When I arrived, I was told this was not allowed, but it wasn't clear why. Maybe the municipal bikes need to stay in city limits? This was about a decade ago. Maybe you can enlighten me?

Hm, strange. That has been allowed for many years now, you do pay a fee of 10 euros though. There are no restrictions on where you can ride the bikes either.

https://www.ns.nl/klantenservice/deur-tot-deur-diensten/ov-f...

>Kan ik een OV-fiets op een andere locatie inleveren?

>Je kunt een OV-fiets ook op een andere locatie inleveren. Je betaalt dan wel € 10 extra. Deze extra kosten zijn voor het verplaatsen van de fiets.

>Lever je de fiets in bij een andere locatie op hetzelfde station? Dan betaal je niks extra.

Was that an OV-fiets (which I was talking about)? (Also asking because they're not by the municipality.)

The main restriction is that you should bring it back to the place where you rented it, or pay €10 extra. I don't know how they'd even know that you took it out of the city?

It was OV Fiets. Maybe the issue is that I wasn't supposed to have it on the train back from Utrecht during certain hours. Or a certain car. Despite receiving this info, I wasn't fined or anything.

Ah, you took it by train - yes, that's probably it. You can only take bikes on the train outside of rush hours. The main reason I think is just because they take up too much space, so presumably it wasn't too much of a problem, so glad to hear they were lenient.

It requires dense cities too unless most of the population is fit enough to cycle

Well, not super dense; it's available at least in the towns and cities that most people either live in or visit. And it obviously only works for people who can cycle.

But with those two restrictions you would still serve a very significant chunk of the population of pretty much any country. It's really the bike infrastructure that's the limiting factor elsewhere.

Bikes can work great for travelers aged from, say, 13 to 70 without much luggage. Not so great for travelers outside that age range, with more luggage, or with physical disabilities. I wonder what fraction of travelers falls into the latter category.

I agree standard bikes are a poor fit for luggage. There are cargo (e)bikes that can comfortably hold large bags (e.g. https://larryvsharry.com/products/ebullitt). They may make sense at major rail stations, but the logistics of keeping them in stock at the station would be hard, and of course this doesn't solve the infrastructure or physical disabilities/age problem.

While we're on that subject, there is a special place in hell for whoever decided to put stairs with the only backup option being the smallest, slowest lift known to man in St Pancras station. Such idiocy.

Yeah, that covers a significant portion of the population, leaving the roads less congested for those who can't use both that and e.g. a bus.

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