We feel so proud standing here after years of hard work.
I can sum up this feeling in one word: Wow.
Not your everyday business.
Maastricht is now a socially undivided city.
I can tell you you're looking at a very grateful mayor here.
Working on the future together from infrastructure to area development.
When you initiate a project, you need to get the local population involved.
They have a right to know what's happening and if their best interests are being served.
These are all requirements that will make a project even better.
But a project actually changing a city's social fabric...
affecting people's itineraries and whom they meet...
you wouldn't take that in account directly. But this was a genuine eye opener.
This new Green Carpet means a difference like night and day compared to earlier.
I now live next to a park instead of a motorway without having to move.
I think that's quite something.
All traffic headed south bound from Amsterdam passed through Maastricht...
approached the city at a speed of 120 km/hour...
had to step on the brakes, because there would be six traffic lights...
forcing them to reduce their speed to 50 kilometres.
What early days was an attractive boulevard became more like a barrier...
separating two neighbourhoods.
A Maastricht University study of pupils from a primary school adjacent to the A2...
showed these pupils were basically smoking about a pack of cigarettes each week.
Living there was unpleasant.
Where the motorway used to be, today we have the Parklaan...
with the tunnel below it, down to 20 metres deep.
When the tunnel opened in 2016, this gave us the opportunity...
to redevelop this area.
In particular, we wanted to reconnect the neighbourhoods on either side.
Now these east-west-facing axes keep the area from becoming inward-looking...
Opening up neighborhoods again to make new connections...
with the rest of the city of Maastricht.
Too bad it's foggy, because usually you have this wonderful view of the Green Carpet.
Four parties were involved in this project.
The municipalities of Maastricht and Meerssen...
the province of Limburg, and the Dutch government.
In terms of financial participation, the Dutch government contributed the most.
So you would expect that the one who pays, decides.
That wasn't the case here. Instead they chose to operate based on an equal footing.
So the end result is put first, and everyone's contribution is equally valuable.
It makes the decision-making process highly balanced.
Because you cannot say that the road is more important than housing,
or than improving accessibility. The one who pays didn't decide,
but the end result we wanted to achieve together, determined all decisions.
This is a 3D cutaway of the project. Here you see the tunnel...
and the ground level above it, the Parklaan with its 2,000 trees...
and housing to the left and right.
First we tried to work out what we felt was the best solution...
how to design the tunnel and the level above it.
Down to the very details we were planning and describing...
what type of solution we wanted the contractors to build for us.
Paper work was piling up, until a point was reached where I said...
that roles needed to be reversed. We're good at defining social issues...
so ask the market to work out what's the best engineering solution.
So how do you get plan implementation closer to plan development?
We haven't just told the builders the outlines of what we want them to build...
but we also asked them to take care of various other things.
The resulting 14 wishes were recorded in an ambition document...
which wasn't an official document, but it was crucial to the plan development.
It really raised the builders to a new level.
Just look at all that has been done here.
A new living environment has been created, space for people to meet.
A new living environment that offers amenity value, where you can do your physical activities.
Quality of life for the city.
What's special about this project is that even at an early stage...
the societal challenge was put first.
Rather than approaching it as an infrastructural, or a capacity project...
they approached it as a societal challenge.
This is like a dream come true. What's wonderful to see is...
how well the idea of bringing two separated communities back together was realised.
Now you get people here coming from every direction...
to sit and socialize, or to drink and eat something.
If the Green Carpet hadn't existed, if there had only been this sound barriers...
I would never have started this business here.
We would never have had this connection we wanted to create here.
construction work between 2013-2016
What you see in this model in white styrofoam will be newly built.
The idea is to develop a whole new housing program for this area...
with a high volume of social housing in certain parts of the neighbourhood.
We'll add about thousand accommodations in the private sector,
in order to make this area more appealing. This is not restricted for people...
moving up the housing ladder, but also from outside of the city.
It turns out that the Green Carpet has put the east of Maastricht on the map...
as a location where people from outside are also keen to live.
So because of this tunnel this area has been put back on the map as an attractive place to live.
When budgeting an infrastructural investment project...
we tend to adopt an narrow defined economic perspective.
Yet it turns out to be difficult to assess benefits for the quality of life beforehand.
Which was also clearly the case with this project.
The initial cost-benefit analysis put the benefits for quality of life for this project...
at 12 million Euros, I believe.
Within two years of the opening of this tunnel...
the CPB published a report which showed that the benefits for quality of life in this case...
within a one-kilometre radius around this tunnel...
were valued at 220 million Euros, almost twenty times as much...
as what had been calculated initially.
We're talking about benefits for quality of life as reflected...
in the increase in property value of housing near the tunnel.
Before, I told people I lived next to the A2 motorway in Maastricht.
And that they probably passed my house from or to their holiday destination.
It was truly a barrier in the city, which now has been completely eliminated.
The other side has become closer.
For the future it will be of key interest to include the social benefits dimension.
I believe that with every major project we should consider...
how to add up one and one to get three.
Because the way I see it, this it not a road project...
but an area development project.
One in which every single factor has been taken into account.
Even involving the local priest.
The societal component has been given a prominent place here...
which makes this project unique and also a great example.