The municipality of Aa en Hunze and engineering firm Royal HaskoningDHV have presented sketches for a new layout of Asserstraat in Rolde. The road is to become a 30 km/h zone.
"People drive too fast, there is too much traffic and it has to be safer for cyclists and pedestrians," Arno van der Enden of Royal HaskoningDHV told the regional broadcaster RTV Drenthe. As well as the 30 km/h zone, the village name signs at the entrances to Rolde will be moved a little further in, and the road will get a continuous hump down the middle. "The hump in the middle of the road can be 'driven over', but it is noticeable," says Van der Enden. "All of that should give you a different feeling as you drive into the village."
"I see that they have managed to bring in measures that deliberately slow traffic down. I am certainly pleased about that," says Ben Ernens, chairman of Dorpsbelangen Rolde, the village's residents' association. In his view, though, cyclists need better protection. "They are not always properly covered when they have to mix with the car traffic."
Ernens also wants traffic in the whole village to be looked at. "I would appreciate it if the municipality commissioned Royal Haskoning to do everything in one go."
Junction with Tumuliboslaan
The junction of Asserstraat and Tumuliboslaan is also being dealt with. Temporary measures were put in place there in December 2023: a warning sign with traffic lights and an advisory speed of 40 km/h. There were plans to fell six oaks along the road to improve visibility, but in the provisional design they stay. According to Van der Enden, the street itself will be realigned to make the junction safer.
No final design yet
"We are still at the beginning," says Christa Schaap of the municipality of Aa en Hunze about the provisional design. She wants to talk to residents about it many more times: "We need to do this much more often, to have a proper conversation. We want the best we can achieve, so that everyone feels represented in the plans in some way."
The plans are part of the municipality's mobility plan, which will be discussed in September. "It is now up to the municipality itself to come up with a final design, which the council will also have to give its view on," says Ernens. According to Schaap, there is still a lot of work to do before anything changes on the street. "We are going to work on Asserstraat in eight places. A good deal of money will have to be made available for that. I hope that in two years' time we will know more and move towards a final design."
