A27

In the first six months of 2018 traffic congestion on Dutch roads increased by approximately 20 percent compared to the same period last year, the ANWB announced. In the months of March April and May there were a lot more traffic jams and rush hour records were broken time and again, RTL Nieuws reports.

The increased traffic was particularly noticeable at the biggest bottlenecks on the Dutch road network, especially on the A4 from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, the A20 from Hoek van Holland to Gouda, and the A27 from Utrecht to Breda.

Four traffic accidents in Noord-Brabant and Gelderland claimed a total of six lives over the past 24 hours.

Dutch public works department Rijkswaterstaat sent a badger expert to Utrecht's Amelisweerd to investigate reports of a badger's burrow found in the forest. Should there indeed be a burrow in the forest with badgers, a protected species, living there, it could affect the expansion of the A27 highway, NU.nl reports. 

From Friday, February 5th, 19 routes will have a speed limit of 130 kilometers per hour, including parts of the A1, A27, A28 and A58. In May motorists will be allowed to drive 130 kilometers per hour during the evening on the entire A2 route between Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Salah Abdeslam, one of the suspects in the Paris terrorists attacks, was apprehended in the Netherlands during a traffic check in February this year. He was fined 70 euros for the possession of soft drugs and sent on his way.

The Belgian police have arrested three suspects in connection with the ING ATM bombing in the Moerwijk shopping center in Breda Monday morning and the subsequent shootout with police in Belgium. According to the police, a great deal of damage was done to the building where the cash machine was located, but the perpetrators did not make off with any money.

Police have closed a stretch of the A27 highway after catching four armed robbers fleeing the scene of a jewelry store heist in Breda. At least three of the suspects are believed to have robbed the Shivani jeweler on Haagdijk nearly 45 kilometers south from where police caught up to them in Nieuwland, Zuid Holland.