From May 11, fat bikes are no longer allowed into the Vondelpark. In this way, the municipality hopes that nuisance and road safety caused by fat bikers will decrease. Fat bike users will be warned in the first few weeks, after which the municipality will switch to enforcement and violators risk a fine.
In November, traffic councilor Melanie van der Horst announced that she wanted to ban fat bikes in specific places. Because measures from the government were not forthcoming, Amsterdam decided to take action itself via the general local ordinance (APV).
Even then, the Vondelpark was expressly mentioned as the first area where a ban had to be introduced. According to Van der Horst and mayor Femke Halsema, there is ‘frequent, serious and increasing nuisance’ caused by people on fat bikes, and the unsafe driving behavior (high speeds, winding, slaloming, cutting) does not fit with ‘the recreational character of the park’.
More than a hundred concrete signals and reports of fat bike nuisance in the Vondelpark were received last year. Halsema and Van der Horst think this is the tip of the iceberg: according to them, the actual extent of the nuisance is much greater than the registered reports suggest.
EXPLAINED | What is allowed and what is especially not allowed with fat bikes?
Ban in the entire city center
Amsterdam is not the first with a local ban on fat bikes: the measure is very similar to that in Enschede. But there the ban applies to the entire city center. According to drivers in Enschede, much of the nuisance has been resolved since the introduction of the fat bike ban.
The new cabinet would prefer that cities no longer have to solve this themselves, but that there are national rules for the fat bike. Previous attempts failed: it appears difficult to legally separate the fat bike from all e-bikes.
In the Amsterdam area ban, fat bikes are defined as bicycles with pedal assistance and tires wider than seven centimeters. But that means that the newly designed ‘skinny bikes’ are still allowed into the Vondelpark.
In the coming period, the municipality will evaluate whether the fat bike ban in the Vondelpark is successful, and on this basis will consider whether bans will follow in other areas in Amsterdam.
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