Cempaka Belanda: So many bikes, so little space

"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

"The Timing of the Great Shift" – Mar 21, 2009 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013.
They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."

"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Friday, February 12, 2010

So many bikes, so little space

NRC International, by Joel Broekaert and Reinier Kist, 12 February 2010 14:32

Bikes. Everywhere. At Rotterdam Central Station. Photo Bas Czerwinski

Dutch like riding their bikes to the train station. But railside parking space is running out.

Anybody who has visited the Netherlands won’t be surprised to learn the Dutch are up to their ears in bicycles. But those bikes have now began to encroach on public space so much, municipal governments are left with few other options than to remove some of them by force.

Train stations in major cities especially are burdened by the number of bikes parked there, the deluge of rusty steeds threatens to clog throughways for passengers and traffic.

Mark Visser, a member of a bicycle removal team, serves on the frontline in the battle against this two-wheeled invasion: Amsterdam’s Central Station. “If we do nothing for a week, we have a total mess on our hands,” Visser said.

Visser and a few colleagues work with a small electric grinder to cut locks and remove bicycles that have been parked outside of designated stands or are left unattended for too long.

A new type of civil servant

Municipal bicycle removal teams have spread through the country like wildfire in recent years. At the root of the problem lies the increased popularity of bicycles as a means of getting to and from train stations. A trend which municipal government often find hard to accommodate in the cramped downtown areas surrounding railway hubs.

Last year alone, Utrecht removed 9,000 bikes, almost twice as much as the year before. In Nijmegen, the numbers went up from 5,474 to 6,331 in 2009. In the same year, The Hague took 7,141 of its citizens bicycles off the street, almost 2,000 more than in 2008. Rotterdam was the only major city where the amount removed remained stable at 12,000.

Amsterdam however, is in a league of its own. Last year, 45,000 bicycles were removed there, 6,000 more than in 2008.

It seems unlikely the trend can be reversed anytime soon. The Dutch semi-governmental agency ProRail, charged with maintain the country’s railroad infrastructure, thinks growth in demand for stationside parking space will outstrip supply by far in the decade to come. Even the construction of dedicated multi-story bicycle parkings won’t be able to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the cycling masses. Amsterdam will be constructing three bicycle parkings near its Central Station in the coming years, enough to accommodate 10,000 bikes. But according ProRail’s estimates, 16,000 places will be required by 2020.

On a national level, the numbers are similar. ProRail estimates 170,000 cyclists will be looking for a parking spot near the country’s train stations ten years from now. Currently planned infrastructure will only provide for 70,000 parking spaces by then.

Did they see it coming?

Wim Bot, of the Dutch Cyclists’ Union, says the shortage of parking spaces has been a long time in the making. “The last ten years, we have seen the percentage of train travelers arriving at the station on their bike increase from 30 to 40 percent. ProRail expects this number to grow to 50 by 2020. The number of train travelers is also growing by a few percent every year. Put two and two together and you have an explosive growth in demand for parking spots,” Bot said.

If ProRail knows what’s coming, why hasn’t it opted to build a bigger bicycle parking in Amsterdam? “At the time when we planned the reconstruction of the station area, our forecasts weren’t as extreme,” said Mark Wienbelt, responsible for bicycle parking at ProRail.

Redesigning the parking facilities to accommodate larger numbers is “unrealistic I’m afraid,” Wienbelt said. “Reconstructions of station areas are massive projects with a lot of moving parts. Changing our plans would be expensive and cause major delays as well,” he explained.

Orphaned bikes

According to Wienbelt, simply adding more parking space would in itself also be insufficient to solve the problem. New garages are always quick to be clogged with so-called “orphaned bicycles”: bikes abandoned by their owners. “We will need to look for innovative solutions if we want to tackle that problem,” Wienbelt said.

A possible answer could be the construction of parking facilities rigged with special sensors that would allow caretakers to see whenever a bicycle was left in place for longer than three days or so, Wienbelt said. “Whenever somebody leaves it their longer, the caretaker would easily be able to remove it.”

Currently, removing an “orphaned” bike can take a lot longer. Bicycle removal teams have developed a special method to determine whether a bike has been abandoned: they put little stickers on a pre-determined position on the bicycle’s wheels. If they return and the stickers are no longer in the same place, this means the wheel has turned and the bike has been used. If it hasn’t, the civil servants put a large orange sticker on the bike announcing it will be removed by the city if the owner does not do so himself within a month.

Removed bicycles end up in the municipal bicycle depot, where owners can collect them, offering the keys to what remains of their locks – often destroyed in the removal process – as proof of ownership. Half of all bikes that arrive at the bicycle depot are beyond repair and destroyed. Of the remaining 25 percent, part is auctioned off to bicycle repairmen and part is sent to social employment projects in Suriname, Hungary, Tanzania and the Netherlands.

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