The Great Bike Revolution

Question: How do you anger tons of people in the Netherlands at once?

Answer: Confiscate their bikes.

So, campus here is closed to cars, so the best way to get to work is to ride a bike.  (You can also walk, which takes a long time, or take the bus, and be crammed with about 500 undergraduates.)

Cramming on the bus

So biking by far wins out among my co-workers, and everyone else at the university.  The result is there are thousands (literally) of bikes that need to park somewhere.

The bike racks are always full, so most people just park their bike near the rack, lock it up, and go.  Until, that is, we got an email that bikes not in the racks were being confiscated by the university.

I ran outside to my newly purchased bike.  Was it safe?  I had only had it for 5 days, yet I couldn't imagine life without it, and I certain as heck did not want to wake up at 4:30 am (again) to buy another one.  My bike was not in a rack, but it was chained to a pole.  Was that ok?  Would some disgruntled university employee saw through my chain?  Would I find my bike being hauled away?  I ran outside.

I found several dozen of my coworkers either moving their bikes or drinking coffee, watching the campus authorities haul off bikes.  So once I made sure my bike was ok, I got my own coffee and looked down at the spectacle: bikes being confiscated, undergraduates arriving from all directions, running to get their bikes, some other undergraduates finding their bikes were already taken, some jumping on the trailer and grabbing their bike before it was hauled off to who-knows-where...

The next day I saw "police" asking people if they worked in my building before they parked their bikes there, but I saw many more students just not stopping their bikes to talk to the police and parking them in front of my building anyways.

(There really are a lot of bikes.  For a point - out of the 50 or so people I've met here, how many do not ride their bike to work?)