The Council of State has made mincemeat of the road closure of the Zuiderdijk for motorcycles between Hoorn and Enkhuizen, which was introduced in May 2021. According to the Council of State, the traffic decision was poorly substantiated.
In this appeal, the court was not lenient in its judgment on the traffic decision. The municipality was unable to provide insight into the number of complaints on which the closure was based, did not know who the complaints came from and what exactly the complaint was about. The traffic decision was also not substantiated by traffic engineering documents.
Furthermore, in the opinion of the court, “the (subjective) complaints from local residents about motorcycles on the Zuiderdijk have not been objectified in the evaluation report, but have only been recorded by means of a survey. […] The council should have carried out noise measurements and investigated whether those measurements could lead to the conclusion that motorcycles produce too much noise on the Zuiderdijk.”
According to the Council of State, the objection that the MAG already lodged against the closure in 2021 was wrongly rejected. Drechterland must now reassess that objection within six months. To this end, the municipality must carry out initial baseline measurements. Without measurements showing that motorcycles produce too much noise on site, there can be no closure.
That is an important element of this statement: it makes it very difficult for road authorities to close roads to motorcyclists. Naturally, the MAG can immediately appeal against the new decision of the municipality.
– Thanks for information from Motorfreaks.