Introduction - The past 20 years bicycle usage in Amsterdam has increased with 40 percent and it is expected that growth will continue. Bicycle usage has advantages on large societal scale, but bicycle parking leads to nuisance and problems for accessibility in certain areas. Since open space in a city is scarce, solutions need to be found to decrease the bicycle parking problem and improve the quality of the living environment.

Study - The current study analyses the value that citizens of Amsterdam attach to parked bicycles and bicycle parking facilities in their residential environment. Additionally, the willingness to pay for indoor bicycle parking facilities is analysed.

Method - This study is the first study of the willingness to pay for bicycle parking and is therefore exploratory in nature. With an online survey and face-to-face interviews 227 unique respondents are gathered. Besides an extensive descriptive analysis, the data is tested with the use of ordered logit and binary logit regression.

Findings - The results indicate that people are (highly) irritated by wrongly parked bicycles in the streets (70.6%) and that there is a willingness to pay for bicycle parking (€ 5.90 to € 7.80), under certain conditions. For facilities located nearby, a higher bicycle purchase price indicates a higher willingness to pay. However, the location of the facilities is the most important factor in the decision to make use of and pay for an indoor bicycle parking facility, all other decision factors seem to be overruled by the walking distance from the parking facility to the ultimate destination.

Conclusions and recommendations - The willingness to pay for indoor bicycle parking facilities is shown in the table below. Further results indicate that it is necessary to develop adjusted policy plans concerning bicycle parking for different areas, that areas with high bicycle parking pressure should be identified and that enforcement concerning bicycle parking should be implemented.

Average willingsness to pay