After twenty years, Theo Smit is used to the train traffic in front of his house in Vught. Every day the necessary intercity trains, local trains and freight trains pass by. He has no problem with that. In fact, he bought this house on the track precisely because he takes the train every day for his work in Amsterdam. Yet this week he will face the Council of State to object to a sharp increase in freight transport, together with 31 others.
The Council of State will consider 32 objections from Vught on Thursday and Friday. Residents, organizations and companies are resisting plans to convert the track. The ministry wants to create a branch from the Betuwelijn, which would mean a significant increase in freight transport for Vught. “And those trains will mainly run at night,” says Theo.
The fact that he now objects to the plans that the ministry has for the railway in Vught has to do with the numbers of freight trains that they will soon have to deal with in Vught. “We are talking about seventy freight trains every 24 hours.”
And freight trains simply cause much more nuisance for local residents, Theo knows. “They rumble on for much longer, make more noise and give off much more vibration.” Like the other objectors, he is afraid that his living environment will be affected by it.
“There are already residents who sleep badly because of the night trains,” he emphasizes. “Those vibrations affect health. This is apparent from research by the RIVM, but the government does not take this into account.” It also damages the houses.
If the track is converted, a large part of it, slightly more than a kilometer and a half, will be deepened. This is a concession to the residents of Vught who did not want the railway crossing to be closed all the time. Theo Smit calls this solution an ‘important gain’, because it means that traffic can continue on the rail.
Theo emphasizes that the objectors are not against more train traffic. “That is what we all want. We want people to travel more by train and as a transport country we are increasingly opting for freight transport by rail. But you will also have to take into account the people who live along the track.” That is why he wants more measures against vibrations and noise pollution.
Theo Smit does not yet want to think that the Council of State declares the objections unfounded. He thinks that the government has learned from the Allowances affair and the handling of the problems surrounding gas extraction in Groningen. “I have tentative hopes that the judges will look at the people a little more and consider more broadly than just following the laws,” he says with a smile.