No agricultural tunnels, but roundabouts in the N375 at Berghuizen and Gijsselte. The municipality of De Wolden wants to present the council with an alternative to make the provincial road safer. An alternative that costs considerably less money than the construction of tunnels.
In total, this concerns three million euros, about one third of that amount is for the account of the municipality in this alternative. The province of Drenthe will take care of the rest. Building the agricultural tunnels would be more expensive.
Initially, the tunnels would cost four million euros, alderman Turksma said during a council meeting in November. But due to unforeseen problems and price increases of materials, another six million would be added to that.
The proposal has been discussed with the residents of both places. The Gijsselte working group hopes that attention will be paid to the amount of traffic to the Gijsselterweg towards the Echtenseweg and Oosterstraat during the construction of the roundabout. They think more traffic calming measures are needed.
The municipality of Hoogeveen believes that the construction of the roundabout will result in more cut-through traffic towards Fluitenberg. De Wolden and the province think that traffic brakes will solve this problem.
The working group in Berghuizen says it understands the construction of a roundabout. They do think that there will be noise and light nuisance and that traffic will increase on the Koekanger Dwarsdijk.
The proposal was supposed to be discussed in the council this evening, but after consultation the subject has been moved to the next meeting in April.