A few years ago, Rudy van Deventer from Assen bought a nice hybrid car to drive around in a better way for the environment. He assumed that he could easily charge near him. “Unfortunately, I found out that is not the case. I can only park in this parking zone, but there is no charging station within it. And according to the municipality, there is no possibility to install one.”
To promote electric driving, owners of electric vehicles can request a charging station nearby. That’s what Van Deventer did and that charging station was also built, a few hundred meters away at the Veemarktplein. “This is it, I have requested this charging station” Rudy points to the placed station. “But I am not allowed to park here, because this is in a different parking zone. So this is of no use to me.”
Back in his house, Van Deventer shows the correspondence with the municipality. “According to the municipality, it is a reasonable solution that I go there after nine o’clock in the evening. However, the municipality emphasizes that once the car has been charged, I can no longer park there and have to remove the car. So that means that I have one I have to move my car to my own street at night, otherwise I will make a mistake. That is not a reasonable solution.”
According to Van Deventer, any other resident in the same parking zone would have the same problem. “I hope that the municipality changes the policy and that if you have a parking permit you can charge in any parking zone. Regardless of whether it is your own zone or not.” Lucky for Rudy, he can charge his car at work. “The strange thing is, I used to always go to work by bike. But now I regularly go to work by car to recharge. So I’m actually even more polluting.”