‘City residents drive more’
You could say that if you pay according to use (road pricing), people in ‘rural areas’ will pay more than those who live in a city. That is just the other way around, claims caretaker Minister Mark Harbers (VVD) of Infrastructure and Water Management.
In advance, road pricing seems to be able to hit people in the countryside in particular in the wallet. After all, those who live in a small village far from a large city often have to travel considerable distances for facilities and public transport is often not exactly fine-meshed. That will be significantly reduced later, if you have to pay per kilometer with the road pricing that the outgoing cabinet has planned for 2030. Yet it is precisely the people in the city that are more affected, according to Harbers. That message The Gelderlander.
Harbers refers to an investigation by his own ministry. This shows that a car of a resident of a city travels on average slightly more kilometers per year than the average car of a rural resident. That is striking, because earlier this summer according to figures from Statistics Netherlands that it really is the other way around. That is why people in Zeeland in particular were already screaming murder and fire. According to Harbers, work is also being done to improve public transport in rural areas, although no concrete plans have yet been presented. In any case, according to him, the ‘tax would not shift to the countryside’ when road pricing is introduced.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl