2024-01-08 17:58:00
Will we reach 10 million? That is now the question when it comes to the Dutch vehicle fleet. That just keeps growing. According to new figures from the car industry organization Bovag, 180,000 passenger cars were added last year, so that there is now a total of 9.4 million cars driving around in the Netherlands.
Although driving does not always lead to anything. It is precisely the enormous numbers of vehicles that take to the roads in the small, densely populated Netherlands that create growing lines of stationary or slow-moving cars. The ANWB has found a suitable word for this national annoyance: traffic jam severity. This not only means the length but also the duration of the traffic jam. And yes, we stood in longer lines for longer periods last year.
Last year, traffic jams increased by 17 percent. There will be many more traffic jams in 2023, not only during rush hours, but also during the day. The busiest rush hour of the year was on April 6, the Thursday followingnoon before Easter. On that rainy day there was 1491 kilometers of traffic jams in the Netherlands.
Not a smart investment
But all this was not just because the fleet has continued to grow, says Victor Knoop. “The number of cars is not necessarily decisive for traffic jams. How and when we use those cars is more relevant.” As an associate professor of Transport & Planning (TU Delft), Knoop knows everything regarding traffic jams. And therefore also that they will not disappear: “We have to accept that there will probably always be traffic jams. We’re not going to get rid of it. The number of people will also continue to grow for a while.”
According to Knoop, it is not a smart investment to ‘just’ build or widen new roads. “When considering whether or not to build a new road, we must look at how much and how often we want to use the road.” A lot has changed since the corona pandemic.
This is also noted by the ANWB, which monitors the daily flow on the roads. The General Dutch Cyclists’ Association saw the daily hustle and bustle on the road immediately return when the virus subsided. It is just as busy as before the pandemic and the effect of working from home and traveling outside rush hour is hardly visible anymore, concludes the ANWB. Yet there is indeed a post-corona reality. Just as the NS and regional transport companies have already noted, it is also noticeable on the road that Dutch people often work on Tuesdays and Thursdays and therefore take the car.
Spread working hours more
So don’t just invest in road widenings, says Knoop, but first see whether you can achieve much more through behavior. There are traffic jams, even on the busiest roads, especially during rush hours. It is quiet in many places for most of the day.
“It is often not economically viable to widen a road for this purpose,” says Knoop. If we have been so flexible as to shift our working hours to Tuesdays and Thursdays, he suggests, then it should also be possible to spread our working hours more. Then traffic jams will still not disappear, he expects: “But then they will become shorter. Although you have to accept that they also last longer, even on other days of the week.”
After all, there is little that can be done regarding other causes of traffic jams, such as road works and weather conditions. It also does not look like the number of cars is decreasing. In fact, Bovag and the Rai Association expect 360,000 new cars to be registered this year. That is more than the forecast for 340,000 new cars sold last year. And already well in the direction of a total of 10 million.
Also read:
Why we will never get rid of traffic jams once more. ‘Fewer traffic jams also lead to more mobility’
With an annual record of more than 900 kilometers of traffic jams on Tuesday, the road was traditionally busy this week. After quiet corona years, people are returning to work by car en masse.
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