The problems continue to pile up in Wijdemeren. The municipality has been in a financial crisis for some time and is therefore under guardianship of the province. Now that is also visible on the street: important road maintenance has come to a standstill because the province is putting a stop to it. And that while certain places need urgent attention.
Wijdemeren wants to tackle several traffic bottlenecks this year. For example, the municipality wants to improve traffic safety around schools, redesign the Middenweg, reduce speed on the Molenmeent, reserve money for wider bicycle lanes on the Nieuw-Loosdrechtsedijk and redesign the Noordereinde, including the construction of a regional cycle route.
Lion Avenue
Refurbishment of the Leeuwenlaan is also an example of this. Concerned residents have already raised the alarm about this. They want to reduce the speed on the road. The municipality wants to participate in this. But more money is needed to turn this street into a 50-kilometer road. For example, a new asphalt layer and thresholds must be installed.
But because Wijdemeren is struggling with a serious budget deficit, it is under preventive supervision by the province. There is no cooperation from Haarlem for the time being, so it is not possible to say when these activities will take place.
The municipality itself also has no euros on the shelf to allow the projects to continue. “We also have no budget available for residents’ wishes in the field of road safety,” says the mayor and aldermen.
That is a hard blow, because maintenance is needed in all places sooner than today. In the short term, there is a ‘real risk that safety and accessibility will be compromised at a number of locations’. “This is reflected, among other things, in a significant increase in non-plannable, daily maintenance costs,” according to the Board.
Capital destruction
Wijdemeren has five maintenance and replacementprojects as urgent. Postponing these projects, including for example the refurbishment of the Prinsessenbuurt, are inadmissible in the eyes of the municipality. The risks of insecurity, reduced accessibility and even capital destruction are increasing, according to the Commission.
The directors in Haarlem remain adamant. To qualify for cooperation from the province, Wijdemeren has selected five projects that it has qualified as inescapable and indestructible. So far this has not yielded any results.