On a daily basis Frans leaves his home in Broekhuizenvorst in Limburg to travel to his work in Amsterdam. That’s about 165 kilometers for a one-way trip.
“That means that I am on the road for almost four to five hours a day,” says Frans. “I alternate the train and the car. If I have appointments in the Amsterdam region I prefer to go by car, because then I am more flexible. But otherwise I prefer to take the train, with all those traffic jams these days it is often faster. “
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Moving away
The travel time of Frans is not nothing. But he doesn’t want to move. “I love living in Broekhuizenvorst. All my acquaintances live here, I really don’t want to leave here. I feel at home here,” he says. His eight-year-old daughter also plays a major role in this. “She has her life here, with boyfriends and girlfriends, also because of her I don’t want to move to the other side of the Netherlands.”
Canceling his job is also not an option for Frans. “I am very happy there. I usually leave between five and six in the morning and then I am home again between seven and eight in the evening. It is sometimes heavy and I have little free time during the week, but I’m really talking about it! “
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Causes
Frans is therefore not the only one. According to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), one in three workers commutes between different cities. That was 27 percent in 1995. And the average distance in commuter traffic increased from an average of 14.6 kilometers to 19 kilometers.
There are various reasons for this, says PBL researcher Jan Ritsema van Eck. “More people have a car and then you can also take a job that is farther. There are also more double-income households, then one of the two may have to work in a different city.”
A remote job is also accepted more quickly, because nowadays it is more normal to work at home occasionally.
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