Bikes in Breda

Everybody know around the planet, nowadays, bikes are really important in the Netherlands. We can see this fact in Breda such as everywhere in the country. When we went out of the train station the first day, the first thing I saw was the bikepark. There were an impressive quantity of bikes, parked very very close from each other.

Source : Ségolène DADILLON

In addition all the roads are configured with cycling in mind/to encourage cycling

In addition all the roads are configured with cycling to encourage cycling. There are a lot of bicycle paths, and when a ciclyst has to cross the main road, bicycle paths are generally having priority. Even the pedestrians are not allowed to cross a bicycle path without letting the priority to cyclists.

Also, there are obviously different kinds of bikes here. The most interesting of them is the Dutch bike. The Dutch bike is a bike made to be ridden only in cities, and on it you stay straight, you don't lean.

But because of the great number of bikes in Breda, there is also the problem of theft . Indeed, a lot of bikes are stolen everyday in the city, and are sold once again the following day. We mainly see this phenomenon during the night and when there are party in the city, because some people steal thing only if they are drunk. Anyway, because of this situation, most of the bikes have a lock on the back wheel that we call « horseshoe ».

We bought our bikes in a weird shop, which was in a dark street. The owner open his shop after 6 p.m. everyday, and this shope is just a little box with 10 or 15 bikes. Also, there a lot of broken wheels, broken horseshoe. It was a strange moment to buy these bikes but we paid 50 euros per bike instead of 100 or 200 euros in a normal shop.