15 Genius Bits of Cycling Infrastructure (and How Well Do They Actually Work?)

Every so often a list goes round the internet of the cleverest cycling infrastructure in the world. A footrest at the traffic lights. A lift that pushes you up a hill. A cycle path that glows in the dark like Van Gogh's Starry Night. A road made of solar panels.

They're lovely things to look at. But a clever idea and a useful one aren't the same thing, and the lists never tell you which is which. Does anyone actually use the bike lift? Did the solar road make any electricity worth having? Do footrests change how people ride?

So I went back to fifteen of the best-known examples and looked at the evidence: how many people use them, what they cost, and whether they fixed the problem they were built for. Some work brilliantly. Some work so well there aren't enough of them. A couple are better to look at than to ride. And one has been dug up.

1. Utrecht: the biggest bike park in the world

Two-tier racks at Stationsplein, Utrecht, shortly after the final phase opened in 2019. Photo: Fantaglobe11, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Under the square outside Utrecht Centraal there's a three-storey garage with space for 12,500 bikes. The city calls it the largest bicycle parking garage in the world, adding "as far as we know". Nobody has come forward with a bigger one.

It opened in stages: 6,000 spaces in August 2017, then the full 12,500 in August 2019. You ride in on a cycle path that runs through the building, and electronic signs tell you which rows still have space, so you're not wheeling round looking for a gap. The first 24 hours are free. After that it's €1.25 a day.

The detail I love is how ordinary the city treats it. There are about 22,000 bike spaces around the station in total. This is just the big one.

Does it work? Yes. The bikes it was built for used to be chained to every railing round the station. Now there's so much space underground that the city has banned parking bikes on the street in the station area, and removes the ones people leave there anyway. You only do that when the garage is the better option.

2. Amsterdam: bike parking under the water

The Stationsplein garage at Amsterdam Centraal, under the water in front of the station. Photo: Hay Kranen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Amsterdam Centraal had a famous problem: a floating three-storey bike park and thousands of bikes chained to every railing in sight. In January 2023 the city opened its answer, a garage for 7,000 bikes built beneath the water in front of the station. It reportedly cost around €60 million. A second garage at IJboulevard, behind the station, added another 4,000 spaces.

As at Utrecht, the first 24 hours are free. Press reports at the opening put the daily charge after that at €1.35.

Does it work? Yes, and the bike mountain outside the station has gone. The catch is demand. Even as the garage opened, the city was warning that the station could run short of spaces again within a couple of years. Build bike parking in Amsterdam and it fills.

3. Copenhagen: the Bicycle Snake

Cykelslangen, Copenhagen. Photo: Jakob Munk, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cykelslangen, the Bicycle Snake, is a bright orange bridge that winds above the quayside at Kalvebod Brygge, about 220 metres of it. It opened in June 2014 so that cyclists heading for the Bryggebroen bridge no longer had to carry their bikes up steps or squeeze through crowds of shoppers.

It was designed by Dissing+Weitling and cost DKK 32 million. The planners expected around 12,500 riders a day. On one day in 2015, 20,700 people rode over it.

It's not just a bridge. It's a cycle lane that refuses to stop where everyone else does.

Does it work? Yes. A forecast is the easiest way to judge a bit of infrastructure, and this one beat its forecast by more than half on a busy day. It also took a crowd of cyclists out of a crowd of pedestrians, which is half of what it was for.

4. Eindhoven: the roundabout that floats

The Hovenring, on the border of Eindhoven and Veldhoven. Photo: HHahn, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Hovenring is a ring of cycle path, 72 metres across, hanging from 24 steel cables attached to a single 70-metre pylon. Cars go round the busy junction underneath. Bikes go round above, without stopping for anything.

It had a shaky start. It first opened on 30 December 2011 and was shut again within a week, because wind was making the cables vibrate. Dampers were fitted and it officially reopened in June 2012. It has been one of the most photographed bits of cycling infrastructure in the world ever since.

Does it work? Mostly, though it's harder to judge than it looks. I couldn't find a published count of how many people ride it each day. What it certainly does is let bikes cross a busy junction without waiting at a single light. Whether that needed a 70-metre pylon, rather than a plain tunnel, is another question. Part of its job is to be looked at, and it's very good at that.

5. Trondheim: a ski lift for bikes

The CycloCable on Brubakken, Trondheim. Photo: Sillerkiil, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Brubakken, in Trondheim, is a 130-metre hill with a gradient of about 20%. Since 1993 it has had a bicycle lift. You put your right foot on a small footplate that pops up from a slot in the road, keep your leg straight, and it pushes you to the top while you sit on the saddle.

The original, invented by local man Jarle Wanwik and called Trampe, was replaced in 2013 by the CycloCable, built by Skirail, part of the Poma ski-lift group. It's free to use.

It hasn't been a runaway success. It costs the council about NOK 300,000 a year to maintain, plans for more lifts elsewhere in the city were dropped, and one Swiss paper called it a flop. But Trondheim has kept it running, and it's still there.

Does it work? Not really. It works, in the sense that it pushes you up the hill. But it moves one rider at a time, nobody copied it, and Trondheim itself decided against building more. It's a much-loved tourist attraction, and that's about it.

6. Copenhagen: somewhere to rest your foot

A footrest and leaning rail at a junction in Berlin. Copenhagen did it first. Photo: SupapleX, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

This was the one that started the whole list. Around 2010, leaning rails with a footrest started appearing at junctions in Copenhagen, so you could wait at a red light without getting off the saddle. According to the blog Copenhagenize, the signs said: "Hi, cyclist! Rest your foot here… and thank you for cycling in the city."

They've spread around Denmark and well beyond, and they're standard on Copenhagen's cycle superhighways. One Danish study found they didn't stop anyone running red lights. Nobody minded.

The same thinking produced my favourite small idea of all: a handful of bins tilted towards the cycle lane, so you could throw away a coffee cup without stopping. They never seem to have gone beyond a trial, which is a shame.

Does it work? Yes, at the one thing it promises. It doesn't change how people ride, and it was never going to. It just makes waiting at a red light nicer, for almost no money. That's a perfectly good thing to spend public money on.

7. Copenhagen: the green wave

"Grøn bølge": ride at 20 km/h and the lights stay green. Photo: Leif Jørgensen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

On Nørrebrogade, one of the busiest cycling streets in Copenhagen, the traffic lights are timed for bikes rather than cars. Ride at 20 km/h and you'll hit green at all 12 sets of lights along a 2.2 km stretch, into town in the morning and out of town in the afternoon. The city found it cut journey times for cyclists by 17%.

A newer version detects riders as they approach. And in the Netherlands, Groningen once trialled rain sensors that gave cyclists green more often when it was raining. The kind of idea that only seems obvious once someone has done it.

Does it work? Yes, and this is the one with the clearest numbers. A 17% shorter ride, every day, for the cost of reprogramming some traffic lights. If I could have one thing on this list built in a British city tomorrow, it would be this.

8. The Netherlands and Germany: streets where cars are guests

"Fietsstraat: auto te gast." Deventer, 2023. Photo: Donald Trung Quoc Don, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

A Dutch fietsstraat is a street where the bike comes first. The sign says it all: "auto te gast", the car is a guest. Cars are allowed, but they're expected to slow to 30 km/h and fit in around the bikes, and cyclists can ride side by side.

Germany's version, the Fahrradstraße, goes back further than you'd think. The first was Herbststraße in Bremen, in 1978, copied from an example in Amsterdam. A reform in October 2024 made them easier for German towns to create, and allowed whole Fahrradzonen: entire neighbourhoods where bikes have priority.

No new bridge, no tunnel. Just paint, a sign and a change of rules. It's the cheapest thing on this list.

Does it work? It depends on the street. The Dutch road safety institute SWOV studied fietsstraten in 2023 and found a large share of drivers going over the speed limit on them, and that the wider the street, the faster the cars. Where the street is narrow and full of bikes, drivers really do behave like guests. Where it's wide and the cars outnumber the bikes, the sign is doing most of the work.

9. London and Brighton: the bike hangar

An on-street bikehangar in Camden. Photo: Camden Cyclists, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

Plenty of people in British cities would ride more if they had somewhere to keep the bike. Not everyone has a hallway, and nobody wants to carry a bike up four flights of stairs. The bike hangar fixes that. It's a lockable shelter for six bikes that takes up about the same space as one parked car.

They've been a huge success, and that's the problem. A 2023 count by the campaign group Clean Cities found 6,654 people on the waiting list in Hackney and 6,066 in Lambeth, and an earlier tally put London's total at over 60,000. Rents vary by council. In 2023 Lambeth charged £30 a year and Camden £36.

Brighton & Hove went one better and installed 150 "smart" hangars from the company Falco, which you open with an app. By March 2024 it had a waiting list of 2,120 as well.

Does it work? Yes. The only complaint anyone has is that there aren't enough. Waiting lists in the thousands are about as clear a verdict as you get.

10. Japan: the robot that parks your bike

An Eco Cycle entrance in Japan. Everything else is underground. Photo: Hanonimas, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

In parts of Japan, you can wheel your bike up to a small kiosk on the pavement and watch it disappear. The Eco Cycle, made by the engineering company Giken, reads a tag on the bike's fork, pulls it in and stores it in a cylindrical shaft about 11 metres underground. When you come back, you tap a card and it fetches your bike in around 13 seconds.

It takes up almost no space at street level, which is the whole point in a city like Tokyo. The system is reported to be in use at more than 60 sites across Japan.

Does it work? Yes, where it makes sense. It's a big machine to dig into the ground to store a bicycle, so it only pays where land is the scarcest thing in town. Next to a busy Tokyo station, it is. Most places would be better off with a rack.

11. Germany and Denmark: cycle superhighways

The RS1 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, on an old railway bridge. Photo: Dat doris, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

A cycle superhighway is a long, wide, direct route between towns, built so you can ride fast without stopping. The most ambitious is the RS1 in Germany's Ruhr valley, planned to run around 100 km from Duisburg to Hamm, linking cities that are home to millions of people.

The trouble is building it. Only around 17 km is open so far, and work on Essen's first section only started in July 2025. It's a reminder that the idea is the easy bit.

Copenhagen's region has done better with its Supercykelstier. The partnership of 27 municipalities behind them now plans more than 60 routes and over 850 km. Look out for the footrests.

Does it work? Yes, where they've actually been built. The idea is sound: a fast, direct route makes a 15 km commute by bike realistic. But a superhighway that is 17 km out of 100 isn't a superhighway yet, and the Ruhr shows how easily a great plan stalls.

12. Copenhagen: the busiest bike bridge in the world

Dronning Louises Bro, between the lakes and Nørrebro. Photo: Leif Jørgensen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

If you want to see what all of this adds up to, stand on Dronning Louises Bro on a weekday morning. In 2021 the City of Copenhagen counted 42,600 cyclists a day crossing it, more than three times the number of cars. In autumn 2016 it hit 48,000 a day.

There's no clever gadget here. Just wide, protected lanes on both sides, and a city that has spent decades making the bike the quickest way to get anywhere.

Does it work? Yes. Three bikes for every car is what success looks like, and it came from boring, wide lanes rather than anything clever.

13. Paris: Rue de Rivoli

Rue de Rivoli, Paris. Photo: LTDLGuidon, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

In 2020, Paris took one of its grandest streets, Rue de Rivoli, and handed most of it to bikes. In 2025 its counters recorded around 11,400 cyclists a day, second only to Boulevard de Sébastopol. It became the symbol of how Paris turned itself into a cycling city.

It may not stay exactly as it is. In June 2026 the new mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, was reported to be proposing a bus lane on the stretch between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, which would take space from the bike lanes. Nothing has been decided. But as I found in Seville, even the most successful bike lanes can be taken out again.

Does it work? On the numbers, yes, emphatically. Over 11,000 riders a day on a street that used to be a traffic jam. Politically, it's still fragile, which is a different problem.

14. Nuenen: the path that glows

Daan Roosegaarde on his Van Gogh path at night. Photo: Daan Roosegaarde, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Vincent van Gogh lived in Nuenen, near Eindhoven, in the 1880s. In November 2014 the designer Daan Roosegaarde opened a stretch of cycle path there, about 600 metres long, set with thousands of small stones that glow at night in swirls inspired by The Starry Night.

It's still there and still beautiful. It hasn't been as easy to keep glowing as the launch photos suggested, and it has needed adjustments since. But it does what most infrastructure never tries to do. People go out of their way to ride it.

Does it work? As art, yes. As transport, not really. It's a short stretch of path in a village, and nobody has rolled glowing stones out across a city. It does make people want to ride somewhere at night, though, which counts for something.

15. Krommenie: the solar path that didn't make it

SolaRoad, Krommenie, while it lasted. Photo: Blueknight, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

And here's the one that's gone.

In November 2014, Krommenie, north of Amsterdam, opened SolaRoad: about 70 metres of cycle path made of solar panels under a layer of tough glass. It was the first in the world, and it made headlines everywhere. In its first year it produced 9,800 kWh, more than its makers expected.

The problems were more ordinary. The top coating came away within weeks and had to be replaced. Cracks appeared. Critics pointed out that the same panels on a roof would produce about twice as much power for a fraction of the cost. In November 2020 the test ended, and the path was resurfaced with plain asphalt.

Does it work? No. It made electricity, just not enough to justify putting solar panels under bike tyres instead of on a roof. It's still a good story. Just not the one the original lists told.

What the ones that work have in common

Put all fifteen side by side and a pattern comes out.

• The ones that last solve a boring problem. Where do I leave my bike? How do I get over this junction? Why do I keep stopping at red lights? The glamorous ones get the photos. The boring ones get the riders.
• Parking matters as much as lanes. Four of these fifteen are about where the bike goes when you're not on it.
• Cheap can beat clever. A sign that says "auto te gast" has done more for Dutch cycling than a road made of solar panels.
• Nothing is permanent. Lanes in Seville and Paris show that what a city builds, a city can take out. Which is why the cities that keep going, like Copenhagen and Utrecht, are so remarkable.

If you'd like a less glamorous take on the same question, I've also written about the bike lanes nobody uses, and about the small towns that got cycling right without any of the headline-grabbing stuff.

If you've enjoyed this, you might like The Velorution Post: a 16-page magazine I post out every month, with a Velorution Icons trading card, a postcard, stickers and a letter from me. It's £12 a month, or you can give it as a present for 3, 6 or 12 months.

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What have I missed?

There must be a clever bit of cycling infrastructure near you that never made the lists: a bridge, a shortcut, a ramp, a bike lift, something you use every day and wish everywhere had. Leave a comment below and tell me where it is.

Sources

• Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons licences linked in each caption. The featured image is Cykelslangen by Orf3us, CC BY 3.0.
• City of Utrecht, Fietsparkeerverbod in het Stationsgebied: street bike-parking ban and removals in the station area.
• City of Utrecht, Bicycle parking Stationsplein: 12,500 spaces, "the largest in the world, as far as we know"; first 24 hours free, then €1.25 per 24 hours. Dezeen, August 2017: first phase.
• Bloomberg, January 2023; Bicycle Network, January 2023; road.cc: Stationsplein 7,000 spaces, ~€60m; IJboulevard 4,000 spaces. Ingeniøren, February 2023: city warning of a shortage within a few years.
• Cykelslangen: opened June 2014, Dissing+Weitling, DKK 32m. Danish Architecture Centre: 20,700 riders in one day, 2015.
• Hovenring: 72 m deck, 70 m pylon, 24 cables; opened December 2011, closed for cable vibration, reopened June 2012.
• Trampe bicycle lift: 1993; CycloCable by Skirail (Poma), 2013; 130 m, ~20%. Blick: maintenance costs and the council's decision to keep it.
• Copenhagenize, January 2010: footrests and leaning rails. Bikerumor: sign wording. Life-Sized City, 2009: tilted bins.
• Centre for Public Impact, Green waves for bicycles in Copenhagen: Nørrebrogade, 20 km/h, 17% time saving. DutchNews, October 2012: Groningen rain sensors.
• SWOV (2023), Veiligheid van fietsstraten and Uijtdewilligen, Weijermars & Nabavi Niaki (2023): speeding on fietsstraten, higher speeds on wider streets. German Federal Government, StVO reform: Fahrradstraßen and Fahrradzonen. First Fahrradstraße: Herbststraße, Bremen, 1978.
• Clean Cities Campaign (2023): London cycle hangar waiting lists. Hackney Council, cycle hangars. Brighton & Hove City Council, cycle hangars review (2024).
• igus, When the robot parks the bike; road.cc: Giken Eco Cycle.
• Landtag NRW and ADAC: RS1 length and progress. Supercykelstier: 60+ routes, 850+ km, 27 municipalities.
• City of Copenhagen, Bicycle Account 2022: Dronning Louises Bro, 42,600 cyclists per weekday (2021).
• Ville de Paris: 2025 counter figures. Le Bonbon, June 2026: proposed bus lane on Rue de Rivoli.
• Visit Brabant, Van Gogh–Roosegaarde cycle path.
• SolaRoad: opened 2014, 9,800 kWh in year one, coating and crack problems, closed and resurfaced November 2020.