Roughly 11,500 Writers Guild of America members walked off the job in May, angered by how working conditions have changed in the streaming TV era
Plagued by ever-shrinking space to park its hundreds of thousands of bicycles, Amsterdam opened on Wednesday the first of its largest-ever bicycle parking complexes, built underwater in a pioneering engineering project.
The shelter is constructed beneath the Open Haven Front, an access tributary to the city’s IJ river, and will be followed by another next to the IJ itself that will open in February.
They will have a combined capacity for 11,000 bikes in the cycling-mad Dutch capital.
“Together the shelters will be the largest in the city,” the Amsterdam municipality said, with the Open Haven Front storage able to take 7,000 bicycles and the IJ-side site around 4,000.
Construction started in 2019 and involved draining part of the Open Haven Front next to Amsterdam Central Station.
A time-lapse video posted by the Amsterdam municipality showed how the water was pumped out, the structure built and the area eventually re-flooded.
“We have a lot of knowledge and expertise when it comes to water,” Dutch deputy infrastructure minister Vivianne Heijnen told AFP at the opening ceremony.
This storage “makes optimal use of the space you have in a small country”, she said.
Conveyor belts take cyclists nine metres below ground level, according to wUrck, the architectural firm that designed the ultramodern parking spaces that aim to evoke their oceanic surroundings.
“The cyclist steps into an imaginary oyster with a rough exterior of basalt and natural stone and a smooth, light interior,” the firm said in a statement.
“Now you will be assured that you can immediately park your bicycle when you come to Amsterdam station,” the city’s transport alderwoman Melanie van der Horst said.
There are an estimated 900,000 bicycles in Amsterdam with some 625,000 trips made daily, according to the city’s 2021 Bicycle Monitor plan — and finding proper parking has long been a headache.
Roughly 11,500 Writers Guild of America members walked off the job in May, angered by how working conditions have changed in the streaming TV era
The mission even asked Emiratis to follow safety instructions issued by authorities
Anthony Sanchez was convicted of raping and murdering 21-year-old Juli Busken, who had just completed her last semester at the University of Oklahoma
Multiple people had notified Google Maps about the collapse in the years leading up to his death and had urged the company to update its route information
As all challenges cannot be addressed at the same time and during just one summit meeting, a build-up with many events are needed to iron out the differences
The news of the transfer to HMP Thameside comes days after a major manhunt was launched after a terrorist suspect escaped Wandsworth prison
The Ukrainian president will also meet with Joe Biden at the White House and will speak with US military leaders at the Pentagon
Police and paramedics arrived but were unable to stop rottweilers attacking their owner