A call for a regional road network

The motorway has reached its limits 

The traffic jams on our motorways are gradually taking on impressive dimensions. For some time now our policy has tried to cope with the problems on the road network by stimulating public transport and directing as much traffic as possible via the motorways (criteria Policy Plan Sustainable Mobility Flanders). But the spread of traffic congestion (mobility) shows that these solutions can only solve the problem to a limited extent.

On the other hand, everyone knows that the rampant laying down of new asphalt is also not the solution. Not only is it very expensive, it also leads to an unacceptable encroachment on the limited available space and on the environment, inside and outside the cities. Every citizen can experience this dilemma personally: one moment he’s a motorist and in favour of more roads, the next he’s enjoying his living environment and opposing the construction of this new road through his back garden. By means of a pricing policy we could possibly arrive at a better distribution of mobility, although from an economic viewpoint it is undesirable to curtail mobility by means of the price mechanism to such an extent that traffic jams will disappear.

The structure of the road network no longer meets current needs 

The nature of the problem becomes clearer if we look at the development of the road network in a historic perspective. The current structure of the network of main roads still dates from the 1970s. Not only did we then have far fewer cars, our daily movement pattern looked very different from today’s. The population was more heavily concentrated in the cities than today and daily travelling was largely within the cities. To make it possible to drive comfortably and quickly from one city to the next, a network of motorways covering the whole country was gradually constructed. However, the volume of traffic between the cities was modest. Smaller towns and villages which were not on the motorways were accessible via the network of secondary roads.

In recent decades, however, much has changed: traffic patterns today look very different from those of roughly 30 years ago. Firstly, there is far more driving: car ownership has increased sharply. Secondly, making grateful use of the possibilities of the car, we have moved en masse from the city to spacious residential plots in the surrounding countryside, egged on by the lack of spatial planning, especially in Flanders. Thirdly, in conjunction with our ever-increasing prosperity we have significantly enlarged our daily activity radius. Not only do we work further and further away from home, our social networks are also less and less limited to where we live.

 All this has led to a robust growth of automobile traffic. This increase has taken place especially in regional traffic, that is traffic over a distance of about 20 to 30 kilometres. Nowadays a large part of our daily home-to-work traffic takes place within this range. While the regional traffic has therefore increased enormously, the structure of our road network in broad lines is still geared to the situation of about forty years ago. The traditional design of the road network no longer meets the current movement patterns and needs.

The implications for motorways

On the motorways we are seeing the consequences of this strong increase in regional traffic. Originally the motorways were intended for relatively thin traffic flows over longer distances. In designing these roads special attention was paid to speed (120 km/h) and comfort. Especially in the Flemish Diamond, but also outside it increasingly, we have seen the traditional function of the motorways being snowed under by heavy traffic flows over short distances: the traffic jams on the motorways are to a large extent caused by regional traffic. For this type of traffic, circulation is far more important than speed: if one makes a short drive, one prefers to continue driving on at 80 km/h than being stuck in a traffic jam on a road where 120 km/h is allowed.

We also see that the motorway is often the only high-quality connection between two areas; there is no alternative that even approaches it in terms of speed and capacity. This makes the road network very vulnerable. Such a strong concentration of traffic on a small number of routes often leads to environmental and liveability problems in urban areas.

The consequences for the secondary roads

What once used to be the ‘countryside’ has become more and more built up in recent decades. As a result the secondary roads have had to handle more and more traffic, even though they were not designed for this. Because many secondary roads go through built-up areas, the biggest problems being experienced are road safety and damage to the environment.

In addition, the secondary roads also show us the consequences of the fact that the road structure is organised in such a way that traffic prefers to get on to a motorway as quickly as possible. This often leads to major detours and illogical routes, which are not only a nuisance for the motorist but also cause many unnecessary kilometres driven by car and therefore unnecessary congestion and emissions. The junctions of these heavily congested secondary roads with the motorway have grown significantly in recent years, and the large amount of traffic filtering in and out causes major disruptions to traffic flow on the motorways, often resulting in the formation of traffic jams.

Does the current policy offer relief?

We are currently seeing in Belgium a typical reflex which we also saw in the Netherlands in the 1990s. The Netherlands was confronted with an explosive growth of traffic congestion on the motorway network much earlier than Belgium. This was caused by a combination of strong population growth, prosperity and economic activity in the Randstad with the fact that this area is not centrally situated. In addition, our northern neighbours do not have residual capacity in the form of a system of paved roads because, for civil engineering reasons (many bridges, soil with little carrying capacity,...) the motorways in the Netherlands were constructed not parallel to, but in the place of the old connecting roads.

In an attempt to achieve more growth and prosperity, but without incurring the high social cost of expensive infrastructure, all hope and all policy initiatives were focussed for years on better public transport and better utilisation of existing capacity, which we also see in Belgium today. Although it is generally accepted that this Dutch policy brought some temporary mitigation, traffic congestion continued to increase by an average of 5% per year. And under pressure everything becomes fluid (unfortunately with the exception of traffic!), also public opinion which is not keen on new roads. Under pressure of an impending traffic gridlock with sporadic record days of traffic jams reaching almost 1000 km, the Dutch have in the last few years increasingly shelved their objections against new concrete and massive investment in road infrastructure is taking place.

But they are doing it cleverly. Instead of concentrating capacity even more (adding additional lanes to existing motorways), the principle of ‘unravelling’ is often used in the management of bottlenecks, whereby separate lanes are constructed for regional and long-distance traffic. In addition, the most congested regions have invested in a robust and coherent system of regional through routes. These are roads with a relatively low speed limit (+/- 70 km/h) – this is necessary in order not to compete with motorways, and not to invite longer journeys. But these regional through routes can reliably handle large volumes of traffic because important intersections are on different levels (parallel in and out filtering). In this way the policy not only recognises the need for capacity that is more spread out (in the interest of the regional transport market); in the network of main roads, too, more high-quality alternatives are created for the otherwise very vulnerable motorways. In this way one avoids all traffic getting trapped during roadworks or accidents, bringing a whole region to a standstill.

A solution for Flanders?

 Is a cohesive regional network of through routes of this nature an effective solution for Flanders also? Most certainly. Firstly it would mean added capacity, precisely where it is needed. It would reduce the existing pressure on motorways and moreover create space for further growth of traffic. This growth would comprise genuinely new traffic with all its social and/or economic added value and would come not so much from longer journeys (e.g. people who move to live further way from their work, or look for work further away from home), an effect that is noticeable after the construction of motorways or fast rail connections (IC-lines – the average commuting distance to Brussels of 48 km among train users is more than twice that of car commuters (20 km)). Secondly, the road network would become less vulnerable to disruptions (accidents, road works, events). Motorways and regional through routes, after all, can to a large extent supplement each other’s function when problems arise, so that real alternatives are created for route navigation and diversion.  Furthermore, as a result of more direct quality connections, routes will on average become shorter so that fewer kilometres will be covered in the same journey pattern (environmental gain, safer). Lastly, these new roads can be constructed more safely than the existing N-roads downgraded by ribbon development, which can now be redesigned with a view to more local purposes and better quality of life. Dutch studies have calculated all these advantages and show that the benefits far outstrip the costs.

Is a cohesive regional network of through routes like this an attainable solution for Flanders as well? That is less obvious. With our ever advancing ribbon developments the flow function of our N-roads has been significantly affected, becoming intermingled with the function of opening up areas and even providing access to premises. As a result it has in many cases become practically impossible to upgrade these roads to regional through routes at an acceptable cost. The choice remaining is that between massive expropriations or laying claim to scarce open space; and for both of these it is difficult to create public support. A more acceptable alternative might be to make the regional through routes coincide with other line infrastructure (motorways, railways). These can be adjacent as well as – for spatially difficult passages – at higher or lower levels. But regional through routes in our country will in any event end up being more expensive than in our neighbouring countries that are spatially better planned.

Is there actually room for new roads in our small and densely built-up country; do we not already have the densest road network in the world? Belgium indeed has a dense road network. But if one compares the trunk road network of our country with that of comparable European regions (Randstad, the Ruhr, Île de France, Greater London) then we are far from being a front runner. For example, Flanders with 216 lane-kilometre of motorway per 1.000 km2 has manifestly fewer motorways than the Ruhr (630 lane-km/1.000 km2) or the Randstad (901 lane-km/1.000 km2). And with 446 km per 1000 km2 the densely populated Flanders also has fewer trunk roads (motorways + numbered N and R roads) than the Dutch Randstad (490 km/1.000 km2), even without taking into account the latest Dutch investment in road infrastructure. So we have many local roads in particular, but our trunk road network is hardly disproportionate, although from a motorist’s perspective our perception might be different as a result of the rampant ribbon developments (if you take a look from an aeroplane or on Google Earth, our country actually still seems relatively empty).

Conclusion

Our lack of spatial planning means that our country has a great need of regional transport, a typical automobile market which – with the exception of commuter traffic to Brussels and Antwerp – could never be replaced by cost-efficient public transport. For that very reason our country badly needs a coherent regional network of through routes. Ironically, this same lack of spatial planning makes this solution expensive and politically and socially difficult to sell. Yet, come what may, the feasibility and applicability of this concept in our Flemish context needs to be examined from different disciplines: planners, transport experts, architects, economists... We do after all have to look for a way out of this ironic stalemate, or else accept that the mobility of Flanders – once the pride of the region – will be completely lost.