Blooming or gloomy ?
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This year the RAI—the Dutch motor industry, which organises the Amsterdam Show—held a special reception and dinner for international transport journalists, and the RAI's president (who is also the Scania importer), Mr A. C. M. Beers, told them he thought road transport was going to have a hard time under the present Dutch government—presumably through environmental and rail-support pressures.
But even in that land of waterways the inevitable march of road transport is clear. The Amsterdam canals are frozen over just now (Holland is in the grip of a hard winter) and the children are skating on them far into the night—Little dark figures zipping down the ice under the bridges—and you can't buy a pair of skates for love or money. But even on the freight waterways when there's no ice about, the share of traffic is declining. In Holland 65 per cent of goods now go by road, only 30 per cent by water and 5 per cent by rail.
Mr Beers told us that most of Holland's cut-flower exports used to go by rail; last year 94 per cent sent to France went by road, and 99 per cent to Germany by road.