Amsterdam is widely regarded as the most bike-friendly city in the world. But in what many Citi Bike haters will no doubt interpret as a cautionary tail, that friendliness comes with a heavy price: the NY Times reports today that Amsterdam is being BURIED ALIVE by too many bicycles. "Is this New York City's future?" several NY Post columnists will demand to know in tomorrow's paper. From the Times:

Willem van Heijningen, a railway official responsible for bikes around the station, said, “It’s not a war zone, but it’s the next thing to it.”... Few wear helmets. Increasingly, some are saying what was simply unthinkable just a few years ago: There are too many bikes.

In a city of 800,000, there are 880,000 bicycles, the government estimates, four times the number of cars. In the past two decades, travel by bike has grown by 40 percent so that now about 32 percent of all trips within the city are by bike, compared with 22 percent by car.

Give cyclists and inch and they take a mile! The same thing's happening right here in NYC, what with the bike lanes and the bike share and the Bike Kill. At the rate cycling's exploding here, New Amsterdam is going to be a "WAR ZONE" just like Old Amsterdam, riddled with bicycles and hash bars and goddamn tulips! Truly a nightmare future from which only a few brave souls can save us.