At Zutphen station, where the municipality and the Dutch Railways jointly run the bike storage facilities, benefits are quite clear. Since the start of the experiment in May last year the number of available bike storage places increased to 30% by removing abandoned bicycles. This means that approximately 1000 bike spaces out of a total of 3500 are in use again. Groningen and Utrecht also tried this method, but technical problems were encountered there. Altogether the experiment covered 11.000 bike parking spaces. Now Prorail is looking for new locations.
As soon as a bicycle is parked, built in switches in the bike racks send a signal to a computer. Various monitors in the facility show up-to-date information about available parking spots. In addition the facility manager can see how long any particular bicycle has been parked. If that period exceeds the announced time limit of ten days, the manager can act on it. The Zutphen experiment also showed that good management is an important success factor. According to Prorail, more applications can be added to this technology. For instance, the number of available vacant spaces in the facility can be displayed along important cycling routes approaching the facility, as is commonly done by car parks.