Amsterdam has seen a significant increase in excavation work on its streets over the past year, much to the annoyance of residents and road users.
On average, the streets in the city were dug up six times, causing considerable inconvenience to the surrounding area. Recent figures show that no fewer than 31.373 excavation works took place in the 4.977 streets of Amsterdam. This data, derived from the Klic reports that are registered with location intelligence specialist Sogelink (GOconnectIT), shows how often the streets in Amsterdam were dug up.
The Klic notifications, which are mandatory by the government, aim to prevent excavation damage to cables and pipes. However, it is clear that these activities lead to a lot of inconvenience, and that causes frustration among both residents and road users. In particular, streets that function as essential traffic arteries, such as the Amstelveenseweg, are regularly the scene of large-scale excavation activities.
A look at the most affected streets in Amsterdam shows that the Hornweg, Sloterweg and Amstelveenseweg in particular suffered the most. In the period from June 2023 to June 2024, the Hornweg topped the list with 140 excavation notifications, followed by the Sloterweg with 135 and the Amstelveenseweg with 132 notifications. “The fact that roads are so often open causes frustration among residents and road users,” says Eric van den Beuken, Policy Advisor Public Space at the Municipality of Amsterdam. He points out that it is a major problem for traffic flow in particular when busy streets, such as the Amstelveenseweg, have to be dug up repeatedly. “Everyone then has to take a detour, which leads to a lot of extra traffic,” says Van den Beuken.
excavation work
Other parts of Amsterdam were also frequently affected by the excavation work. In total, 64 streets were dug up more than 50 times in the past year. However, there were also streets that were tackled less often, such as the Mandemakerssteeg and the Zuiderkerkhof, where excavation work took place only once.
One of the biggest challenges in dealing with digging nuisance in Amsterdam is the conflict between the various parties involved in the work. The municipality aims to minimize digging nuisance to keep the city liveable. “To keep Amsterdam liveable, digging nuisance must be minimal,” Van den Beuken emphasizes. Network operators, on the other hand, have a delivery obligation and are bound by maintenance and environmental regulations. They must ensure that the utilities remain reliable and meet the requirements. This means that they must regularly carry out work on the underground infrastructure, which in many cases leads to digging up streets.
“The supply of utilities must be reliable and continuous. The underground infrastructure must also meet environmental and permit requirements, and be regularly maintained to prevent disruptions. To achieve this, the street simply has to be opened,” explains Dennis van de Weerd, Commercial Marketing Lead at Sogelink.
better coordination
In order to reduce the nuisance caused by excavation work, both the municipality and the parties involved are advocating better coordination and cooperation. In Amsterdam, this is done via the Coordination System for Road Works, a system in which network operators and other organisations coordinate their activities. The aim of this is to limit environmental nuisance and to minimise the impact of the work on the daily lives of residents and road users.
Sogelink plays an important role in this by registering, analysing and visualising information about the underground infrastructure. This data can be used by the municipality of Amsterdam in the coordination system to better coordinate the planning of work. "This reduces inconvenience, costs and staff deployment," says Van de Weerd.
The municipality of Amsterdam hopes that combining various activities will further reduce the nuisance caused by digging and traffic congestion in the future. Van den Beuken emphasizes that the municipality would like to see underground activities bundled as much as possible, so that streets do not have to be dug up again and again. This would not only result in less nuisance, but also in better predictability of traffic congestion, allowing the municipality to anticipate this.
“In Amsterdam, we see that excavation work often goes hand in hand with other interventions, such as the installation of fiber optics or the replacement of gas pipelines. If we can better coordinate these types of work in the future, we can prevent many problems,” says Van den Beuken. He refers to the situation on the A2, where there is currently considerable traffic disruption due to large-scale work. The municipality would like to prevent such situations in the future by working better together with all parties involved.
