Large scale survey prepares the new Flanders Regional Mobility Plan
About thirteen thousand people filled in the survey. 24,4 percent says that road safety should be the top priority. Speed comes second with 17,6 percent. There is however a difference between road users: from the sample of frequent cyclists, 37,3 percent rates safety to be number 1, out of the sample of frequent car users, 24,3 percent perceives speed as the main concern and 18,3 percent car drivers rate safety the most important.
Next to safety and speed, items such as 'being able to leave at any moment’ (12,1 percent) and ‘being able to assess the trip duration’ (10,4 percent) rate high.
Better roads
To increase road safety, a large majority is in favour of redesigning roads (88,3 percent), campaigns are second (72 percent), increased use of public transport (72 percent) and better separation of road users (70 percent).
Other suggested solutions are less popular: 29, 6 percent is against higher fines (44,8 percent is in favour), 20,5 percent is against technological solutions such as automatic speed adaptation (55 percent is in favour).
Correct information
Solving congestion will have to build mainly on organising correct information flows, so people can better adapt to the situation, respondents say. Next to this, carpooling, promoting off-peak trips and teleworking and teleconferencing can help. Least popular are measures to make travelling more expensive at peak times and increased road capacity are at the bottom of the list.
Environmental concerns
Cycling (90 percent) and public transport (78 percent) rate high when it comes to naming solutions that can tackle environmental problems. Some measures see more opponents than advocates: a speed limit at 100 km per hour, limitng access to city centres to environmentally friendly vehicles, reduction of travel by air and the number of vehicles on the road.
The Flanders Regional Minister, Mrs. Hilde Crevits, will use the results of the survey when developing the Flanders Regional Mobility Plan, to be issued in the first half of 2012.
(source: De Standaard)