In 1987 the first Decree on Air Quality was put into
operation in The Netherlands. All cities with more than 40,000 inhabitants had
to report about air quality every year. There was no money to do this In
Utrecht. Only old traffic data, no street data and a model with growing pains
were available.
The environmental policy in Utrecht was about preventing
problems which they thought was a better and cheaper solution rather than solving them afterwards. Advising in
other city sector plans with the help of a model can do this. This doesn't take
much time and mostly traffic data are needed for other purposes (noise, traffic
measures). Utrecht made
the model more suitable for advising in plans.
After every project the street data set, the experience
and the arguments for better traffic data were investigated. When advising projects for
the prevention of problems it is also possible to solve problems in the
existing situation related to the project. Of course it will take a long time
before all the problems are solved this way.
In 13 years all problems, except one, were solved.
Regarding the new legislation (report over 2002) there are two real problems
(one small situation was overlooked before), some cases with small exceedances and many streets just below the LV+MOT
(limit values and margins of tolerance).
Because the city is growing and traffic on the motorways
increases, it will be very difficult to prevent problems in 2010. The awareness
that only substantial measures on city level will help, is growing by the
information in projects.
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