Business As Usual
Post 2010 as the world tried to recover from the recession, Netherlands with its relatively high living standards continued to attract more immigration. Governments cut public expenses to decrease budget deficits while corporations became reluctant to invest. Consequently required investments for public transport fell short. As a result, the personal car held its status symbol and remained as the most attractive way to travel, while travel distances continued to increase, resulting in congestion problems. More advanced traffic information systems and new taxes for car owners failed to discourage car usage. As the time spent in traffic increased, new ways were developed to make more effective use of that time. More fuel efficient, smarter and smaller cars filled the roads as new automatic driving systems were implemented to avoid human error in driving. With the increase in oil scarcity, hydrogen became the main source of energy and congestion problem worsened.
2010 - 2015
After the recession in 2008-2009, the economic recovery in Europe was slow. The Greek financial crisis and the possible budget deficit problems of Spain and Portugal, made E.U. cut government spending across all the member states, including Netherlands. During these unstable times, companies stopped investing huge amounts of money to keep their liquidity. Job market became more competitive as companies became reluctant to hire more people. However, Netherlands remained as an attractive country for immigration compared to other countries because of the high living standards of Dutch people. Growing concerns about immigration of unskilled workers strengthened the right parties in Dutch government. New legislations to stop illegal immigration and at the same time attract highly skilled workers to supply the required workforce for economic recovery were being considered. With improvement in technology, cars continued to get better with respect to comfort and fuel economy and held their position as a status symbol , which made them more attractive to buy. Therefore although economic recovery was slow, the trend of buying cars did not stop and consequently number of cars per family continued to increase as the years went by.
Due to the cuts in government spending, there was no significant increase in road network and any construction was generally limited to widening of roads. Consequently the investments in public transport were relatively low and in light of scarce funding, there was very little innovation in public transport.
Since there were no real substitutes, cars continued to be the dominant mode of intercity travel. As more and more cars were added to the roads, traffic congestion became a perennial problem. The peak hours stretch and the length of jams increased steadily. People were spending more time travelling which affected productivity and increased frustration. Although cars were getting more fuel efficient, this was not enough to offset the increase in number of cars and increase in travel distances, resulting in increased consumption of oil, ultimately causing more emission of greenhouse gases. The increased congestion problem was finally felt on a wide scale and people started to realize the gravity of the situation. The government finally stepped in and announced key policies such as use of ICT to control traffic and pay as you drive tax.
2015 - 2025
As the congestion problems became more severe, there was increased pressure on the Dutch government to take some serious steps. However developments were slow and the actions already taken by the government needed more time to deliver concrete results. The investment in public transport was not sufficient enough to make it attractive. The frequency was still low and many destinations were not covered by trains or trams. This meant that people still preferred to use cars.
With steady immigration, the population continued to increase, causing city centres to become more populated and therefore undesirable for living. As a result, Dutch people continued to move out of cities for the sake of a better family life. This led to an increase in travel distances as most of the offices were still located in and around city centres. In the absence of a very efficient public transport, cars were still the preferred mode of travel and consequently the pollution in the cities reached to near maximum tolerable levels.
Although there were advancements in ICT, the companies were afraid to make huge investments and to take the risk of significantly changing their working styles, and therefore the location of offices did not change. Due to the increasing time being spent in traffic, new technologies were developed to enable people to use that time productively. Mobile phones became more integrated with the cars and gave drivers new ways for communication, such as audio recognition for emails and advanced teleconferencing facilities After a long period of crawling economic growth, EU finally got the economy back on track by sustained fiscal stimulus. This period was marked by a boom in the Netherlands economy, which encouraged people to pursue a lavish lifestyle. However at the same time a real scarcity of oil was felt throughout the world and oil price soared, which urged the stakeholders to pursue alternative sources of energy with more vigour. As the global climate disasters continued, going green became a burning issue throughout the world.
2025 - 2040
By 2025, negotiations about renewable sources of energy had reached its climax. It was decided to bring an end to petrol/diesel dependency for transportation means. Hydrogen and electricity would be the new standard for cars and other road transport vehicles. Car manufacturers were able to mass produce fuel cell vehicles and put them on the market at the same price as conventional cars. At every tank station it was possible to charge cars with electricity or hydrogen.
Thanks to the oil scarcity, people had found out the benefits of small cars - they were not only fuel efficient but also eased the traffic congestion to a certain extent. Mini cars were popular as people still saw car as a convenient way to travel, but not as a status symbol. In order to discourage people from buying cars, the government introduced additional taxes and increased the prices of new cars.
By 2035 the last bugs were removed from a computerized system, which allowed cars to drive automatically on the highways, without interference of the human driver. The system which was under development for quite some time, provided instant communication among cars on the highway and the central traffic information system. It was believed that the system was almost faultless. In 2040, after 5 years of excessive testing, the system had become available to the public for the first time. The claim was that this system would be able to reduce the distance between the cars and therefore ease the traffic flow. Moreover it could avoid the mistakes that humans made, which actually created all the traffic jams. Since human interface was not required, people could even work from their cars without having to worry about the traffic. The car had in fact become a mini office. Although congestion continued it did not affect productivity as people were saving time.
The days of oil were over and hydrogen rose as the new energy source. However by 2040, with the increasing popularity of cars and the cheap hydrogen available, the congestion problem became worse than ever.