Transport minister Camiel Eurlings, other ministers and dozens of local authority officials on Monday signed an agreement aimed at speeding up plans to reduce traffic congestion in the region around the Netherlands’ four biggest cities and increase accessiblity.

The programme, known as Randstad Urgent, includes a number of major road-building projects – several of which have been in the planning stage for decades – as well as a massive extension to Rotterdam port known as the Maasvlakte 2.
The Randstad urban area around Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague is the economic motor of the Netherlands but is becoming increasingly inaccessible because of its poor infrastructure.
The new government had pledged to make reducing jams a priority. Today’s programme, which covers 33 separate projects, will kick off with efforts to improve the traffic flow around Amsterdam and the new polder town of Almere – at a cost of €3.5bn.
Employers organisation VNO-NCW welcomed the government’s apparent will to speed up the development process.