The trend towards bigger bikes, cargo bikes and bikes with crates attached to their handlebars is putting pressure on the space in railway station bike parks, the AD said on Tuesday.

Since 1999, 500,000 bike parking spaces have been established at stations but that is far from enough, particularly in Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Rotterdam and Leiden, according to railway infrastructure company ProRail.

Even Utrecht station, home to the biggest bike park in the world, is full at peak periods, a ProRail spokesman told the paper.

There are two causes for the lack of capacity – more people are commuting to stations by bike and bikes are getting bigger, Prorail says.

Some 16% of bike park users now have a bike classified as a ‘bmf’ or buitenmodelfiets (literally -bigger than standard bike) and the growth in popularity of electric bikes means people are travelling to stations from further afield.

Prorail is currently in talks with national government and local authorities to develop a further 100,000 bike parking spaces in the bigger cities, and that cabinet said in June it would allocate €75m to the project.