D66 likes it
If it is up to government parties D66 and ChristenUnie, we may not drive faster than 100 km/h at night either. That won’t suit everyone. However, according to Professor of Transport Policy Bert van Wee of TU Delft, it has several advantages, although it does not make much difference to nitrogen precipitation.
If it is up to D66 and ChristenUnie, we will soon also be driving throughout the Netherlands between 7 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. maximum 100 kilometers per hour. Now you can still drive 120 km/h or 130 km/h on some routes in the evening and at night. Two years ago, 100 km/h was chosen as the maximum speed to free up ‘nitrogen space’ for construction, but now other arguments are also being put forward. Member of Parliament Raoul Boucke (D66) does not only talk about the current energy crisis, but also about road safety and combating traffic jams.
Professor Bert van Wee also thinks it can help to curb the energy crisis: “Cars drive about 25 percent more economically at 100 km/h than at 130 km/h,” he says in conversation with NU.nl. “The lower the fuel consumption, the lower the greenhouse gas emissions. Now that the coal-fired power stations are running at full speed again to spare the natural gas power stations, this must be compensated somewhere. The changes to the traffic law can be implemented quickly and easily.” Moreover, according to him, it is indeed safer: “The mutual speed differences between passenger cars and trucks are becoming smaller, so that the risk of accidents decreases. In the unlikely event of an accident, the impact at 100 km/h will be much less hard than at 100 km/h. 130 and the risk of injury is smaller. With this speed limit, cars are also a lot quieter, so that less noise is experienced in densely populated areas.”
Nitrogen hardly an argument
There is, however, a major caveat to the ‘nitrogen argument’ that was given two years ago for the reduction. A speed reduction from 130 km/h to 100 km/h makes hardly any difference to nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. That is what Van Wee stated at the time. Now that nitrogen is once again the talk of the town, partly because of the plans for the agricultural sector, it is good to know what role traffic plays in this. A lower speed in the evening and at night will not bring the Netherlands much in that area. Van Wee: “If passenger cars, vans and motorcycles drive at 100 km/h instead of 120 or 130, the deposition of nitrogen compounds (the precipitation of nitrogen on the soil and in the water) decreases by only a few tenths of a percentage. nature doesn’t notice the difference.”
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl