Abstract
Road side interviews held on main routes in the Netherlands show that roughly half of the traffic on these routes perform trips longer than 100km. A number of national motorways supply a smooth connection for such distances. In the flat Dutch landscape the detour can be kept within 10%. Regretably there also are examples of important routes that are much worse in this respect. Main conclusion is that more attention should be given to long distance traffic when decisions on overall alignment are taken.