The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has announced the Future Perspective for Automobility 2040. It shows that car use is expected to increase further in the future. In the coming years, the emphasis will be on making better use of road capacity, increasing road safety and further greening the vehicle fleet.
The Ministry no longer believes that interest in the car is waning. In fact, the Ministry expects that the demand for car mobility will only increase in the coming years, also among young people. In the document, the Ministry further endorses that “approximately 90 percent of all journeys with public transport would take twice as long or even longer”. Only in urban areas is that demand decreasing. The car will continue to play a dominant role in the mobility system in the future, with the Ministry recognizing that ‘other modalities usually do not offer the same functionality and comfort’. The core of the policy for the coming decades is to be able to continue to use the power of the car, but also to strengthen the cohesion in the mobility system. In concrete terms, this means that the accessibility of prime economic locations must be improved and that switching from car to, for example, the train to travel to city centers must be easier.
Greening
Furthermore, when expanding the capacity of the road network, the Ministry wants to look primarily at optimizing the existing networks and their use. Increasing road safety is particularly important here. The stimulation of working from home to reduce congestion is mainly cited as a spearhead for the new policy. Innovations such as self-driving cars and car-sharing services are not expected to have a drastic effect on traffic flow and road congestion in the coming years. They do want to look at how these services can be used better in the future. In addition, the greening of the vehicle fleet still plays an important role. In the coming period, the Ministry wants to do more work on the charging infrastructure and focus on further emission reductions from cars. Finally, it is indicated that attention is being paid to the ‘affordability’ of car mobility, but it is not very clear how this should look exactly.
Elaboration
In the future perspective, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management indicates where it wants to go in the future, but it does not contain any concrete promises. The outcome of the March elections will also affect the government’s future car policy. In the explanation of the Future Perspective Automotive 2040, Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen indicates that she will be meeting with administrative and social parties, knowledge institutions and the business community in the near future to further elaborate the spearheads. The minister also mentions that the aim is to sell new emission-free passenger cars only by 2030. Unlike in England, for example, this is not immediately linked to a legal ban on the sale of new fuel cars.