Transport in Europe

Transport in Europe is a dream - in the countries which I visited it was generally clean, cheap (in comparision with Britain), frequent, well publicised and INTEGRATED.

Bicycles
Travelling by coach through Ghent in the small hours of the morning, I noticed the ranks of bicycles parked everywhere - in the town centre squares as well as in gardens and attached to lamp posts outside buildings. Why so many bikes left in the town centre, I wondered.

Then a friend told me that many commuters in Belgium and the Netherlands have two bikes - one to ride from home to the station and one to ride from the station once you arrive in the town where you work. So all the town bikes spend the night by the station of arrival.

Imagine Waterloo or Kings Cross stations (in London) with sufficient cycle parking for commuters to leave their London bike safely overnight! For more information and discussion on cycle parking provision, see this entry on the KonSULT website (KonSULT is the Knowledgebase on Sustainable Urban Land use and Transport, edited at the Institute for Transport Studies at the Universit of Leeds).