To build a fully climate-neutral transport system in the Netherlands, many citizens will have to give up their cars, Jan Willem Eirsman, the government’s new chief climate adviser as chairman of the Scientific Climate Council, told the AD.
Dutchman here. Our government has been systematically gutting funding for public transport. I have to extend my commute from 40 minutes to 2 hours if I want to take public transport. It’s also unreliable and outrageously expensive since they run it through the “free market”.
Fuck cars but there’s also no way in hell I will sell my car before they introduce some massive changes to our public transport.
If only our public transport was affordable. We pay way more than other European countries (besides maybe Germany and the Scandinavian countries), especially when you consider how little distance you’re really travelling. As an example, to get from Eindhoven central station to Amsterdam central station you take 1 train, it takes you 1 hour and 20 minutes and you pay €22,70 for a one way ticket. If we’re looking at distance, this is about 120 km. This means that to get there and go back home you pay €45,40.
If you travel by yourself you can argue that it’s worth it to take the train there since parking + fuel isn’t that cheap here either. However, as soon as you have more than 1 person the car quickly becomes the cheaper option, even with parking included. As long as they don’t solve this issue I don’t see any success in their push to get people to use public transport. And I know the solution will probably be to make everything even more expensive but that’s not going to help in the long run either…
