As a result of the many complaints about the new parking policy in Zandvoort, the municipality had to adjust a number of points within one month of its introduction. The complaints mainly concerned the registration of their own car and that of visitors via the ParkingService website, the inability to spread the two hours in which residents are allowed to park outside their own area and the shortage of parking spaces on tropical days.
Although the evaluation is planned for October, the parking policy is already being adjusted on a number of points. Many Zandvoort residents complain about the policy. They find it inconvenient, user-unfriendly and expensive. NH Nieuws has discussed parking policy with various residents of Zandvoort in recent weeks. “It’s unclear how it works, you get error messages all the time and no one gives a good answer on how it should actually be done,” a resident summed up the problems with the login system together.
Due to the criticism, the municipality has now decided to make a number of changes to the policy. For example, since Monday, residents have been able to spread the two hours a day that they are allowed to park outside their permit area over the day. Previously, residents could only park outside their area for one session per day, even if it lasted less than two hours.
Aid workers and POETs
The permit for care providers has also been adjusted, so that doctors and home care employees, for example, now park in all streets. Previously, they could not park in streets that are not a permit area, such as Haltestraat, Grote Krocht and Boulevard Paulus Loot. This has now been adjusted to prevent emergencies.
Extra signage has also been installed in the village to draw visitors’ attention to paid parking. In the parking garages and parking lot De Zuid it is now also possible to pay with foreign debit cards, which was not the case before. In addition, more than two thousand addresses were removed from the so-called ‘POET list’ (Parking On Own Terrain). These are addresses where residents can park in their own driveway, according to the municipality. Zandvoort residents who are indeed unable to park on their own property have now received a permit to park in the street.
All adjustments to the parking policy that have been implemented since August 1 can be read in a council information letter from Friday 29 July 2022.
Alderman Martijn Hendriks explains that the current adjustments are mainly issues that could be solved quickly. He has also noticed that the parking regime is causing quite a stir in the village. The municipality of Zandvoort is inundated with emails and phone calls about the parking regime. Alderman Hendriks is also regularly addressed on the street.
“I’ve wondered if it would be useful to introduce this across the village at such short notice”
Don’t all these complaints indicate that the policy was not yet ready to be implemented? Hendriks finds that a difficult question. “As a councilor, I voted against this policy. I also wondered whether it would be useful to introduce this for an entire village at once in such a short period of time. But I also understand that there is time pressure behind it, in a For a tourist village like Zandvoort, such a policy should be introduced before the summer.”
“We have to deal with it,” he concludes. “Whatever policy you implement, there are always teething problems. Where we can adjust, we will do that. Some things are easy to solve and some things just take a lot of time and energy.”
Registration site should be clearer
One of those things is the user-friendliness of the site with which residents can register their own car and that of visitors. There is a lot of criticism residents find the system unclear and it does not help that the system does not have an app.
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“A site has more advantages than an app in terms of security,” says Hendriks. “Of course it could be more user-friendly and clearer in some respects, but it also takes some getting used to.” Hendriks emphasizes that complaints about the registration system will be included in the evaluation of the policy in October.
Criticism of amount of visiting hours
The interim adjustments to the policy have not yet solved all problems. There is also the question of the five hundred visiting hours, which according to many Zandvoorts is too little. “We expect that five hundred hours will be enough for the majority of residents, but during the evaluation we will see how many hours of that have already been used.”
“It is of course not the intention that people no longer dare to invite visitors or even become lonely because of the parking policy,” Hendriks continues. “If it turns out that the number of hours is too few, we will see if we can expand that or come up with an intermediate form.”
The alderman himself still sees a bright future for parking policy. “When I cycle through Zandvoort, I still see many parking spaces for residents. Tourists park in the parking garages and in the parking lots, that was the intention. Of course it is busier in some neighborhoods than in other neighbourhoods, but in general you see that it functions.”