More than 20,000 bicycles are thrown into canals every year in Amsterdam

Amsterdam even has a special service for clearing bicycles from canals. About 10,000 bicycles are lifted per year.

The City of Waternet uses a special gripper on a barge-mounted crane.

The rest continue to rest at the bottom. There are so many bicycles in the water that passing barges sometimes cling to the bottom.

Why are bicycles thrown into the canal?

The population of Amsterdam is 820 thousand people, and every second has a bicycle. Everywhere there are bike paths and as a means of transport that does not require costs, taking into account expensive public transport, the cult of the bicycle is well developed.

There is a joke that in the Netherlands, not coins are thrown into the water for good luck, but a bicycle.

The locals have a tradition of throwing a broken bike into the water. There is a reason for this. The fact is that recycling old bicycles is very expensive.

It's easier to get rid of it by throwing it into the river. But this is done by a very small percentage of local residents. And the large scale lies in another reason - Amsterdam is a tourist city.

Most of the discarded bikes are stolen. Arriving young people simply don’t bother, they take someone else’s bike, and then they throw it into the water as evidence.

In this regard, the Dutch had a joke: if you shout on the street: Hey, this is my bike! Then at least three people will jump off their bikes and run away.