Toine Molenschot and Ekki Kreutzberger gave an introduction to The Hague and its planning policy structure.

Background Information – The Hague

The Hague is the political and administrative centre of the Netherlands although Amsterdam is officially the capital. The Hague is part of the Ranstad which is a highly urbanised area comprising Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague, the most significant cities in The Netherlands (along with Eindhoven to the south). Leiden, Zoetemeer and Delft are considered as satellite towns of The Hague.

The Hague has a mix of architecture in the central area with historical low rise buildings combining with high storey modern office buildings with varied designs. The Hague grew “upwards” following the demolition of poor quality buildings in the historical centre during the 1930s.

The Hague experienced a wave of decentralisation during the 1970s when many businesses re-located to premises on the outskirts of the city close to the motorway linking to Rotterdam and Amsterdam. However, most of these companies have now returned to premises in the city centre. The Hague has no university but there are good universities based in Leiden and Delft, the satellite towns of The Hague as well as in Rotterdam.

Public Transport Plans

The Local Transport Plan divides The Hague into four separate areas for planning; The central zone, south west zone, north east zone and the A4 zone that is on the southern periphery of the city along the A4 motorway. The policy approach is tailor-made for these four different areas of the city. New governmental policy concerning infrastructure and urban development dictate that urban development is located in areas where the necessary infrastructure (transport lines etc) is already in place. Therefore, The Hague is planning a new light rail line (Randstad Rail) to improve connections to Zoetemeer and Delft and to stimulate urban developments along its route. The Ranstad Rail system will be different from the existing tram network (with accessible vehicles and faster journeys) and will perform a role somewhere in between that of the tram and that of the train. The increased accessibility of these satellite towns will increase their importance in the regional context and make The Hague a more polycentric conurbation.

A high speed rail link is also in progress between Rotterdam and Amsterdam and The Hague wishes to see the construction of a station near Breda that would enable The Hague’s citizens to take advantage of this link.

As part of the new light rail line, The Hague’s Central station is being re-developed. Central station is a key transport node in The Hague and is surrounded by high density office buildings where 50% of the staff travel to work by sustainable modes, many through central station – it is planned to increase this modal share to 70%. This area has been developed to include a variety of land use so that buildings are used for business, residential and commercial purposes.

Road network

The Hague is connected to the national motorway network by an urban motorway that penetrates the central area, segregated from the urban road network by running along a lower level. The Hague has reduced the impact of the motorway through the city by using the space above the road for office and housing development. This enables the city to retain a high density of development and reduces the community severance effects of a high speed road passing through the city centre.

The strategy of The Hague is to develop a ring road (the presence of the sea to the north of the city means that a full ring is not possible) so that cars do not pass through the city centre on cross city journeys – drivers to the central area are directed to car parks and are unable to make through journeys. Cycle lanes and traffic calming zones have been installed to ensure that the impact of road traffic in the centre is minimised.

In addition to the construction of the ring road, the Hague intends to use an integrated set of measures including Intelligent Transport Systems and dynamic information screens to improve traffic flow into the busy tourist area of Sheveningen on the northern coast. By providing up to date information directing drivers to the most appropriate routes and parking areas (including Park and Ride), the city hopes to reduce the level of congestion on local access roads. The systems will also show drivers estimated travel times by various routes, to influence traveller behaviour to make optimal use of the road network.

Buses

The present bus network is designed as a “hub and spoke” network with several hubs in key urban centres as shown in Figure 2.3. The challenge of city planners is to expand the bus network to include more orbital routes:

To improve the flow of buses, The Hague has an experimental system where a part time bus lane is activated during times of particularly heavy congestion.

Future Challenges

The focus of transport planning in The Hague is to find the best and most efficient relationship between new urban development and the public transport network. To achieve this, The Hague proposes to increase the density of housing along public transport corridors so that a greater proportion of the population lives close to a tram stop/rail station. To develop the public transport network, the level of revenue from passenger fares needs to be increased to pay for the improvements. The best way of increasing passenger levels on existing networks is to densify the urban development near to the public transport lines, for example, to generate enough revenue to construct an orbital tram line, 20,000 houses would need to be constructed along the route.

To make the existing tram network more attractive, it is proposed to increase the speed of journeys to the centre. On many lines, a door to door journey to the centre can take 40-45 minutes whereas research has found that the maximum journey time accepted by many travellers is about 30 minutes door to door. There are two options to achieve this; to streamline the existing route or to increase service frequencies (thus reducing the waiting time element of the door to door journey). Typically, The Hague’s streets have a wide profile, with segregated roadspace allocated to motor traffic, trams and bicycles, and lined by 3 storey housing built in the 1930s. Historically, houses in The Netherlands do not have a basement due to the soft turf but increasingly, underground parking areas are being introduced to remove cars from ground level, thus increasing the potential for high density housing.

Architects have been contracted to ensure that the designs of the high density housing remain attractive and complement the local environment. However, the demand for housing amongst local people is divided into people who want to live in a city centre apartment and those who want to live in a suburban house with a garden. There is a reluctance to embrace the concept of high density living in suburban areas.

City planners aim to address these attitudes by ensuring that new high density development is of a high quality thus appealing to aspiring young people who can re-vitalise an area and create demand for shopping, leisure facilities etc. Also, preferences for certain types of housing are transitory; demand for different types of house changes over time and can be influenced by planning policy.

The potential impact of increasing density is not yet quantifiable apart from the possibility of increasing public transport frequencies from 6 services per hour to 12 services per hour.

The Hague tram network, cycle lanes, urban motorway, integrated planning!

The demand management group took a tour of The Hague on foot and on tram, where they observed the integrated land use and transport planning of the city, high cycle usage, segregated tram lines and urban development above the urban motorway.

Presentation on the TISSUE project

The Tissue project (Trends and Indicators for Monitoring the EU Thematic Strategy on Sustainable Development of Urban Environment) was a European Commission research project which reviewed urban transport indicators being used by local authorities across Europe to assess the quality of their transport system.

The Tissue project was initiated in response to the following European Commission policies;

• Each capital city and every city and town of over 100,000 inhabitants should develop, adopt, implement and regularly revise a sustainable urban transport plan.
• A directive focussing on the procurement of low energy and low emission road vehicles by public authorities was issued. an Action Plan promoting the market development for alternative fuels, in particular natural gas and hydrogen.
• Development and expansion of the CIVITAS programme, urban research initiatives and the exchange of good practice and experience.

To measure the success of these plans, the European Commission wishes to establish a basic set of urban transport indicators, for which it commissioned the TISSUE project to review the collection of indicators currently taking place across Europe (including new member states). The project reviewed 178 indicators. The Commission will identify a basic set of sustainable urban transport indicators, making use of the work of the European Conference of Ministers of Transport in this field.

The project found varying levels of indicator collection in different parts of Europe with more developed collection of indicators in Western Europe than in North, South and Central Europe. Further details can be found at: http://cic.vtt.fi/projects/tissue/index2.html.