Get moving in Amsterdam : interview with Alexandra Van Huffelen, CEO of GVB Amsterdam

"If you want people to change their mode of transport, it has to be really, really easy". For Alexandra Van Huffelen, CEO of GVB Amsterdam, mobility issues have to be approached with pedagogy, after a careful study of population habits. Public policy should respond with clearly defined goals, integrate the right amount of incentives and, most of all, offer suitable alternatives for citizens.
 
GVB is the municipal public transport operator for Amsterdam, operating metro, tram, bus and ferry services in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. 211 million riders use their service every year.

What are the most used transport modes in the Netherlands, and why ?

At the national level, half of the trips are made by car, which remains the preferred means of mobility. Bicycles represent 27% of all trips, especially for short distances: that is still a remarkable proportion compared to our neighbours. They are frequently used inside cities, mainly for cultural reasons. Bikes have always been at the heart of the “Dutch way of life”. They are perceived as an easy, fast, accessible and relatively comfortable alternative to the car for people who have to make short journeys. Public authorities – in Amsterdam, for example – have understood this and have invested a lot on bicycle lanes: 50% of all travels in the capital city are realised by bike !

Meanwhile, urban public transport only represents 5% of all journeys. Even if they are a great way of moving between and in city centers, they only represent a relatively small percentages of all trips because they are “stuck in the middle”: citizens prefer to use their car for long distances, and they tend to favour walking or biking if they have to travel a short distance. Therefore, on the scale of the country, cars are still essential to a large proportion of the Dutch population for a variety of reasons. The Netherlands benefit from a good highway network. A significant number of travels are commutes in and out of cities, which can best be made by car.

What are the solutions implemented in Amsterdam so as to limit the number of cars in the city centre ? 

Congestion remains an important issue in Amsterdam, even though the capital city benefits from a very historic city centre, with narrow streets, so moving around by car is quite uneasy. The growth of the population, of the number of tourists and the mobility of workers lead to an inevitable increase of cars inside the city of Amsterdam.
 
To tackle the “too many cars” issue, the city intends to make Amsterdam unattractive to cars, by implementing specific incentives:

• Amsterdam has decided to increase parking fees to 5 euros per hour, and sometimes for a limited period of time only.
• It is limiting the number of routes that go through the city centre. In the meanwhile, it is investing 200 million euros over 10 years in public transportation as well as bicycle lanes and sidewalks.
• It has installed “park & ride facilities” in the periphery, encouraging drivers to leave their cars outside of town and use public transport to get to the city centre.

One of the paradoxes in Amsterdam is that people who own a car and live in the city centre can get a permit to park for a relatively limited price, but they tend not to use it because it is inconvenient and they take the risk to lose their parking space. The city is trying to move the parking spaces outside of the city centre (right now, most of them are alongside the canal and create a negative picture of the city).

Is there a global Dutch strategy in terms of pollution control' If so, is there a special role for cars in this strategy ?

Larger cities in the Netherlands have problems meeting the European targets in terms of pollution. Furthermore, they tend to focus on the “most visible” emissions, leaving out small particulate matters (PM) whose consequences on health have proved to be damaging. It impacts birth rate, the health of the elderly, etc. Therefore, focus should be put at the municipal level.
 
Amsterdam has engaged a number of measures aiming at limiting pollution. New parking permits will now only be issued to petrol cars manufactured after 1992, and diesel cars manufactured after 2005. Buses inside the city will be electrified too, since they represent an important part of emissions. Also, there has been efforts from city administrations to encourage multi-modality, in order to consider all separate units of transportation as potential steps for a trip from point A to B. But if you want people to change their transportation means, it has to be made really, really easy for them. Otherwise, users will not take the trouble to change their habits, even if that implies cutting their emissions by an important amount.
 
Furthermore, there are some interesting initiatives at the national level. For example, the government has developed financial incentives for citizens to buy electric cars. These incentives are coupled with the development of an important number of electric charging points outside the cities, in order to push for the electrification of the car fleet. But the government has also taken symbolic actions: for example, in 2030, all travels of government officials will be electric.