Alderman does not say what the best place is now and will discuss it at a later time.
Nijmegen has selected a place for shared bicycles and shared scooters that does not make taxi drivers happy. According to Marc Naether, the municipality of Nijmegen has a permit for Bolt shared bicycles and therefore wants to fully commit to sustainable transport. The idea is that shared bicycles can replace car journeys in the city. The permits for rental of these scooters and bicycles were issued to the companies Bolt, Go Sharing, Check and Felyx.
According to the Nijmegen alderman Cilia Daemen (Groenlinks), they have chosen to sacrifice three taxi ranks for this and to allow Bolt to place 200 shared bicycles. Nijmegen would like to have this type of transport at the station. Taxi drivers are angry because the municipality has not consulted with them. In practice, the taxis can no longer stand, so drivers indicate that the location is not a convenient place.
Daemen indicates that there has been no proper consultation with the taxi drivers and sees this, now when it is already a fact, as the next step. She is now talking to the taxi drivers about how they see this and whether the place should be arranged differently. According to the alderman, the municipality is not to blame because a traffic decision was taken that could be objected to.
"The taxi drivers may not have seen that decision and are now saying in practice, we don't like this"
For one of the taxi drivers, the other side of the road appears to be a better place. “When they take a scooter or bicycle there, they are already safely on the other side,” said a taxi driver in a statement reaction. An unsafe situation was created for those involved by the municipality by allowing users to cross the bus and taxi lanes with their part transport. The alderman indicates that he will not make a statement about the best place at the moment and indicates that he will discuss this at a later time.
Cilia Daemen
Cilia Daemen (1984) has been an alderman at the municipality of Nijmegen since 2022. She is responsible for Well-being, Health, Inclusion, Mobility, Climate Adaptation and Urban Greening. In 2008 Daemen became active locally and nationally for GroenLinks. From 2014 she was a councilor in Nijmegen for eight years. After her studies in General Cultural Sciences at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Cilia Daemen worked as a manager and project leader in the non-profit and education sector. As a board member she was also voluntarily active for various cultural and youth organisations.
