Until recently the usual answer from public authorities to the growth of travel has always been expansion of infrastructure. This has led to a tremendous growth of the infrastructural networks, especially of the road network. Increasingly, this kind of infrastructural policy is not considered to be a suitable answer to the growth of travel. There are many reasons why the continuous expansion of the traffic infrastructure requires great amounts of public expenditure, causes damage to the environment, a decrease of living quality, and an increase of travel (which means that the physical expansion of infrastructure only 'solves' problems during a short period of time). In a country with a high population density like The Netherlands there is also less and less space for such an expansion. In this paper the relation between the use and capacity of infrastructure is the main issue. By varying the use of the infrastructure, one can take more advantage of the capacity reserves, and the capacity itself can be raised. In this way alternative use concepts may contribute to the renewal of passenger and commodity transportation.
Abstract