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STEDENBAAN
The problem for the Stedenbaan		 updated
13 October 2005

Between a rock and a hard place
The Dutch Province of South Holland is in urgent need of better transport services and, in addition, it also suffers from a shortage of housing. There is a risk that both problems may have a negative effect on the economy and on the business climate. Traffic queues are frequent and transport to and from companies is becoming increasingly problematic. The same applies to passenger transport. The public transport services have not developed in ways that are appropriate for a metropolis.

The shortage of appealing and affordable housing is also an obstacle to recruiting people.

Between 2010 and 2030, 180,000 new homes will have to be built. The provincial authorities want to build half of them in the inner cities or alongside public transport lines. Some improvements can be made to the road network but there is no more room for drastic expansion.

These are, in a nutshell, the two main problems facing South Holland.

Joost Schrijnen, director of Space and Mobility of the South Holland provincial authority: 'When looked at independently, these problems looked almost unsolvable but the link made now between an urbanisation strategy and mobility strategy has opened up possibilities.'

>>> The idea



The Randstad: a single metropolis for 7 million people?
The Dutch 'Randstad' is in fact one large metropolis, but a very unique one at that. The name 'Randstad' is an allusion to the edge (the rand ) of the Netherlands; a large urban complex rises slowly as one moves away from the coast. The cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht rub shoulders in a relatively small area. And there are ten more medium-sized towns surrounding them. Schiphol Amsterdam airport is located more or less in the middle of the Randstad urban agglomeration, but also in a large green area known as the 'Green Heart'. The Randstad is home to more than 7 million people (the population of the Netherlands as a whole is 16 million). The province of South Holland includes the southern part of the Randstad (3.5 million people) and cities such as Rotterdam and The Hague.

The administration covering the Randstad involves no fewer than four provincial authorities, ten regional authorities and dozens of municipal authorities. Attempts to establish a single authority for the Randstad have failed repeatedly. This administrative fragmentation is one of the reasons why there is no large city-rail network (Rotterdam and Amsterdam are the only cities with city-rail systems). The complex road network is not the best that one could expect and there is much congestion. The Randstad is also the economic heart of the Netherlands.

To maintain economic vitality, the towns need to make room for tens of thousands of extra new homes. However, the population density is already high. With almost 500 inhabitants per square kilometre, the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world but, in the Randstad, population density is as high as 1225 inhabitants per km2 (in the province of South Holland). The city of The Hague has 5,500 inhabitants per km2.