Vries, Emiel de (2024) Dealing with the trade-off between safety and accessibility of regional infrastructure by means of spatial planning approaches: the case of the N34 road section in the municipality of Aa & Hunze. Master thesis.
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Abstract
The N34 road section in the municipality of Aa & Hunze experiences daily traffic congestions and high relative and absolute numbers of traffic accidents compared to other N34 road sections. As the number of cars using this section increases over time, these situations of poor road safety and accessibility are expected to worsen. However, to date, no final plan for improving these factors of the N34 road section has been finalized and implemented. Therefore, this research aims to show if there is a pattern between the spatial planning approach, derived from the planning theory of De Roo, used by stakeholders in the planning process and whether or not there is a timely design of a final road design that, if implemented, improves the trade-off between safety and accessibility in the N34 case study. This is reached by conducting a comparative analysis in which data on different aspects, derived from media- and document analyses, of the N34 case and five national and international example cases in which problems of both road safety and accessibility has been solved, are compared. The results show that, in the N34 case, a scenario approach is used by the stakeholders in the planning process while in the other five cases the stakeholders used a more technical approach. This indicates that in the N34 case study, compared to the five other cases, there is more consultation with stakeholders, more consideration of stakeholders' interests in the planning process, more power for these stakeholders, and less discretion for project leaders. Since in all five cases both safety and accessibility improved, this study concludes that in the N34 case, the use of a more technical approach by the stakeholders in the planning process is more appropriate than the scenario approach currently used. This gives the Province of Drenthe more power in the decision-making process, as fewer stakeholders are involved and as a result requires less consultation in the planning process, saving time and consequently allowing a final road design to be finalised and implemented sooner and more effectively. However, as the N34 case study is only compared with five cases that all experienced safety and accessibility improvements and all used a more technical approach, and as no deepening interviews with N34 policy-makers were conducted, the results may lack validity. Future research should hence include interviews with policy-makers and analyse more than five cases, including some where no improvements were made and where stakeholders used less technical approaches.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Degree programme: | Society, Sustainability and Planning (MSc Socio-spatial Planning) |
| Supervisor: | Kann, F.M.G. van |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Jul 2024 11:55 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jul 2024 11:55 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4612 |
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