The moving walkway that hauls bikes in and out of the underground parking at Amsterdam Centraal has broken down nearly six times a week on average.
In three and a half years the conveyor has logged 745 faults.
That is up from 506 between January 2023 and November 2025, with another 239 reported in the six months since.
The City of Amsterdam says talks with the supplier and new settings help explain the rise in recorded stoppages.
Rain and street debris
The belt is not fully rainproof.
A heavy shower can wash dirt into the chain or the comb plate at the bottom, stopping the walkway altogether.
Handrails also jam or run ahead of the belt when trash from the street or from users gets into the mechanism.
Cans, screws, leaves and even wigs have all triggered outages.
Who covers the repairs
Four years ago the city signed an all-inclusive maintenance contract with Schindler, so the supplier bears the repair costs.
Builder Max Bögl has also taken part in fixes after construction mistakes at the underground facility were flagged.
Neither company gave a detailed reply when asked about the faults.
The current contract runs out at the end of 2026.
New deal in negotiation
The municipality has spent recent months negotiating a fresh ten-year maintenance deal.
Alderwoman Elise Moeskops told a council committee on 17 June that the talks aim at a more structural solution.
Draft targets call for at least one upward and one downward lane to work 99.5 percent of the time.
Cyclists should need to walk the ramp no more than 44 hours a year.
A monitoring stretch in the coming months will test whether those numbers hold, with weather the main variable.
A solid downpour can still shut the system, so a dry stretch would spare a lot of people the climb.
