‘Save the Spoordijk’ is the motto of the protest walk on the cycle path of the Halve Zolenlijn between Drunen and Waalwijk. There are plans to excavate a large part of the old railway embankment, which is now a bicycle path. And with that, 532 trees will also disappear. “A lot of nature will be destroyed”, says Anton van Tuijl of the Federation for the Conservation of Langstraatspoorbruggen.
Sixty people attended on Sunday. “That seems modest, but we are very satisfied with the turnout. We were able to explain to people what will change here if the plans go ahead. Fortunately, various political parties also participated and that is important, because they are the only ones who We can still reverse the decision already taken,” says Van Tuijl.
The plan is to excavate hundreds of meters of historic railway embankment between Waalwijk and Drunen and replace it with an open bare concrete bridge. “All this to realize a fast bicycle route between Den Bosch and Waalwijk.”
“The first plans date back to 2009,” says Van Tuijl, but certainly in the last two years, when those plans became very concrete, we took everything to protest. Unfortunately, without result, because the Council of State has now also rejected all objections. It remains to re-mobilize local politics.”
“In Waalwijk and Heusden, there are now also political parties that agree with us to simply leave the railway embankment. Our hopes are now based on that, especially with the approaching municipal elections,” says the enthusiastic Van Tuijl, who estimated the total construction costs of the building. the project is estimated at 5 to 6 million euros. “Many people do not realize that near Drunen there will also be a new entrance and exit from the A59, including a roundabout.”
Until 1972, the Halve Zolenlijn was used as a railway between Den Bosch and Lage Zwaluwe. “After that it was used as a freight railway for a while, but due to competition from freight traffic, that was over pretty quickly.”
In 2013, the Federation Preserves the Langstraatspoorbruggen still received the prestigious Europa Nostra Award for the restoration of the Waalwijk bicycle railway bridge. “A bronze plaque of the European Union that recognizes the bridge as European Heritage. Fortunately, the bridge will not disappear. It concerns the stretch of railway embankment as an extension. Some pieces of railway embankment are already a century old, you can’t just dig them out. “