All cities possess multiple bike stands, mainly at the supermarkets and other commonly used shops. Bikes should also come with a lock so as to keep the bike from being stolen. A national scheme, Cycleswap, supports small businesses privately renting bicycles out for short-term use. OV-fiets OV-fiets (literally: "Public Transport bicycle") is the name of a very large, nationwide bicycle rental / sharing system run by Nederlandse Spoorwegen aka NS (Dutch Railways) — by far the Netherlands' largest rail service operator. Almost 15,000 OV-fietsen are offered for rent at over 300 locations across the Netherlands; at many train stations, at bus or tram stops, in several city centres and at P+R car parks. When you arrive at a town's station by train, you can quickly rent an OV-fiets to cycle to your destination. The OV-fiets program, which started on a small scale in 2003, has steadily grown in popularity, first registering 1 million rides in 2011, but Dutch Rail expected 3 million rides in 2017, up 25% from 2.4 million in 2016. However, this was even exceeded — the number came out at 3.2 million. In recent years Dutch Rail expanded their rental fleet by around 1000 bicycles a year to keep up with demand. However, a surge in demand forced NS to rush order an extra 6000 bicycles in 2017. The company aimed to have 14,500 bicycles available by the end of 2017. Membership to the OV-fiets scheme is required, but as of 1 January 2017 only costs €0.01 per year, to verify identity and payment data. Bikes can be accessed using the normal NS public transport card — and 24-hour rental costs €3.85. Since the new policy is in place, the number of registered users has jumped from ≈200,000 to ≈500,000. The nature of the OV-fiets bike sharing program differs somewhat from that of similar schemes in other countries, partly because of the already high bike ownership of the population. The Dutch system is highly integrated with the public transport network, so that people who cycle to the station in their place of origin can continue traveling by bike from the station of their destination. Swapfiets Swapfiets is a bike rental service for residents of several European countries that, for a fixed monthly price, provides a bicycle and covers all repair costs. The service started as a startup that rented refurbished bikes but has since developed an in-house