The Dutch really don’t all get rid of their own car – Weblog

There seems to be a growing number of authorities that expect that owning a car will slowly but surely become obsolete. That everyone can live happily without a car. That mobility is a matter of sharing and that there is no future for your own ‘cocoon on wheels’. The latter in particular is rather difficult to imagine given the situation we are in now. Avoiding crowds does not go well with public transport. It is not without reason that the corona crisis is seen as an important driver of used car sales. The desire for personal transport seems to be getting stronger and even in the long term I don’t see that completely reversing.

This is therefore at odds with the vision of the future mentioned earlier, which the CEO of Siemens Mobility Netherlands also shares. According to him, ‘Mobility as a Service’, or MAAS, will be the big thing. There is no longer a private car in front of the door, but with the app developed by his company, a route from A to B is arranged for you with all kinds of different shared means of transport. If they really want to compete with their own car, there should be a means of transport right outside the door the moment you spontaneously want to go somewhere. Otherwise it has already lost its own car and you will be disappointed that you got rid of it. A situation that is difficult for me to imagine. Maybe it still works in the city, if you are pointed out that there happens to be a beautiful shared bicycle waiting in your street, or that a van just happens to drive past your house with people in it who have the same destination. Realistic?

Don’t get me wrong, I think there is definitely a future for more sharing of modes of transport, but then that should really be a solution for something you might run into right now. Suppose you live in Amsterdam and have no parking space for your own car, then it may be ideal. Instead of having to map out a route with the existing public transport apps, you might then be able to pull a shared car from somewhere much faster and drive to your destination in one line. Or if that one station is just annoyingly far away from your destination and there is still half a city to cross, then it may be useful to know in advance that a shared bike is available to jump on immediately. But here I already outline where MAAS seems particularly promising: urban areas.

However, the Netherlands is so much more than just the Randstad. I myself live in the Veluwe and there is plenty of room for cars and public transport methods are laborious and time-consuming means to get from A to B. It’s just not interesting enough for commuting, either. Although there is a good train connection from my hometown to Amsterdam, I see the car by far as the best way to get to the office. To Hoofddorp it was only a one-time transfer at Schiphol and then a short walk from the station to the office, but now we are in Amsterdam-East and it is becoming a hassle with transferring to buses and walking quite a distance. It doesn’t make sense, it’s that simple. Moreover, in my opinion public transport is too expensive and I would rather be stuck in traffic every now and then than nickel-plating at a station because there is another switch failure. Once the train has arrived, for a few bucks, with a bit of luck, you’ll be gasping someone’s neck in the aisle for an hour. And what if I had to be somewhere as quickly as possible because of an emergency? Looking for a nice shared car or bicycle and walking in that direction? If only there was a faster way…

No, unless really thorough improvements are made in the coming years in terms of available shared transport and infrastructure, a national acceptance of MAAS is, in my view, little more than idealism. In urban areas it will certainly be a solution for part of the population. Outside of that it’s a different story. Before there are no private cars to be seen here in my village, I think we will have passed a government-imposed ban on this.