Traffic management at leisure destinations in the countryside: an integrated approach for transportation and tourism planning Catharinus F. Jaarsma Raoul Beunen Henk-Jan Kooij Wageningen University, the Netherlands rinus.jaarsma@wur.nl

Contents: Recreational Traffic Management (RTM): what’s going on? Long term monitoring, why and how? Effectiveness of RTM Difficult implementation: why? Discussion Conclusions

What’s going on. ●. Nature areas, National Parks and heritage sites: What’s going on? ● Nature areas, National Parks and heritage sites: popular tourism destinations. ● The car is by far the most popular means of transport for these trips. ● This can cause traffic related problems: ● Traffic congestion ● Parking problems ● Negative effects on natural values ● Threatening of specific qualities of a site. A complicating factor: part of a “living landscape”.

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Nog een fig? Car parking in a National Park

Recreational Traffic Management (RTM) should become a main issue in the planning of rural tourism sites. Two aspects concerning the planning of tourism destinations: (1) monitoring of recreational use (2) planning and management / stakeholder participation

Long-term monitoring of recreational use – why ?

Long-term monitoring of recreational use – how? Counting programme for cars and bicycles (mechanical and visual)  visitors Additional visitor interviews

Plaatje tellers ed Counting device Visitor interview

Effectiveness of measures: parking in the Meijendel Dunes

Effectiveness of measures: parking in the Meijendel Dunes

RTM: necessary, effective, however: implementation is difficult. Why? Posbank National Park (NL): Automatic + visual traffic counting Visitor survey Actor analysis (manager of site, governments, ANWB, OCP)

Results actor analysis: Lack of knowledge about the area: Too many cars? Disagreement over the problem! No reliable data Interdependence of actors involved: Site manager needs municipality for licences and support of visitors for finances Municipality depends on province; cannot ignore its inhabitants

Discussion: 1. recreational car traffic in the countryside into a wider framework. A lot of actors get involved in the planning and decision-making processes: Beside the manager of the site also local and regional authorities, inhabitants, the local tourist industry, etc.. All these actors have different ideas about the area and about what should happen in the future. A somewhat paradoxical aspect of RTM: it might be necessary to reduce or relocate car traffic within natural areas, but it’s equally important to maintain accessibility and to attract visitors to local (touristic) businesses

Discussion: 2. RTM and measures ‘stick measures’: can cause a great deal of public opposition ‘carrot measures’: more easily to implement. Gateways: a relatively new example of such a carrot measure offers visitors several facilities, like a visitor centre, restaurants, trails, playgrounds, and of course a car park. A useful means of traffic management: improve the tourism sector, but also concentrate visitors and traffic flows that are currently scattered about the area.

Nunspeet Gateway, developed with a visitor and traffic counting programme: to determine specific problems and suitable measures to evaluate the effects of these measures.

Discussion: 3. RTM: accurate and sufficiently detailed knowledge about traffic flows and visitor needs is required. Costs? Risk of increasing costs by a lack of reliable data Insight into visitor needs enables to design tailor-made and therefore more effective measures, thereby shortening the process and making it less expensive. A systematically method generally enables to cost reductions after a few years

Conclusion: 1. RTM measures are a useful means, affecting the number of cars and their spatial distribution in the area. Problematic implementation: a lack of knowledge about the recreational use of the area the interdependence of actors involved in the planning and decision-making processes. Both aspects need to be considered and related to each other in order to make more realistic traffic management plans.

Conclusion 2. Accurate, sufficiently detailed information about recreation-related use is necessary in the implementation process. Different roles of information: recognition of the problem identification, design and evaluation of measures valuable in the communication with local stakeholders Only data from long-term monitoring projects enables to separate “normal” fluctuations in the number of cars from fluctuations caused by trends or caused by the effects of measures.

Location of gateway projects