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According to the municipality, De Wetbuurt must comply with new guidelines, which should improve traffic flow and street safety. Cars could not pass each other well and garbage trucks regularly cause damage due to lack of space. One-way traffic will therefore be introduced in several streets and 77 parking spaces will be removed to create space. Also, some greenery and bits of sidewalk need to give way in a few places.
However, local residents are fighting for the plans to increase road safety and the quality of life in their neighborhood and want to avoid at all costs the interventions which will take a year and a half in all. At the beginning of August, more than a hundred inhabitants of Amsteldorp therefore filed a notice of opposition with the district.
“It’s a bad solution to a fictional problem,” resident Jochem Floor said at the time. He and other residents believe the problems are grossly exaggerated; it is a quiet area with only one access road. The situation would indeed worsen due to the plans, because the inhabitants would have to look longer for a parking space, for example.
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The neighborhood is also angry about the lack of participation opportunities. According to the municipality, participation would not have been necessary because it is only “major maintenance” and not a new development of the district. There is “little or no freedom of choice or space to bring additional wishes from the neighborhood,” the district said in early August.
Three weeks later, the municipality will come back to it. “We have not correctly estimated the resistance because we have not received any response to the letter in which we reported the plans. If the resistance is so great and continuous, it might be good to tell the locals about it. Because of recess it was not possible earlier.
Work was to start on Monday. According to neighbors, several dozen of them had gathered to demonstrate when it was learned that the work had been suspended. The district committee will meet on August 30 to discuss the matter.
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