Utrecht

Only 15 percent of Netherlands residents are stuck in traffic at least once a week, with most saying that they are much more likely to face difficulties during evening rush hour than in the mornings. The majority, 51 percent, only sporadically end up in a traffic jam. People in the Netherlands are also less and less annoyed by being stuck in traffic jams, defined as stop-and-go traffic that barely rises above 25 kilometers per hour.

Rents in the open market continue to rise, but the increases are slowing down, according to research by rental website Pararius. Amsterdam is still the most expensive city to live in, though rents in the capital increased less than the national average. Bussum saw the biggest rent increase at over 14 percent compared to the previous quarter.

In the last quarter of 2019, rents increased by 4.8 percent to a average price of 16.77 euros per square meter per month, compared to a year earlier. This was the fourth consecutive quarter that the average rent increase was under 5 percent. 

The governments of Noord-Holland, Flevoland and Utrecht are hoping to stimulate electric driving with more charging points. A total of 20 thousand new charging points will be installed in the three provinces, which put out a call for bids on the project on Monday.

"Twenty thousand new charging points are a great next step and will really help to encourage electric driving," said Utrecht provincial politician Huib van Essen. He said his province alone needs at least another four thousand charging points in the coming years.

Buyers of newly built homes in the Netherlands can no longer assume that they will have space to park their cars. Most municipalities currently still guarantee 1 to 1.8 parking spaces per new home, but an increasing number of cities are lowering their parking standards, according to an inventory by newspaper AD.

Mail bombs were delivered to five different businesses in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht over the past week, police said on Thursday. Each of the bombs was potentially dangerous, but luckily none of them exploded.

Authorities cautioned the public to be alert for any letters from CIB in Rotterdam. All of the suspicious, bulging letters carried the CIB logo and Wilhelminakade address of debt collection firm Centraal Invorderings Bureau. In each instance, the CIB logo and address were printed on one label, and the recipient's information was printed on a second label.

At midnight the Netherlands rang in 2020 with firework shows in Rotterdam and The Hague, where the thick fog cleared just in time. While Justice Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus said he feared a "wild west party" this New Year's, there were no major incidents. There were, however, a very large number of car fires, especially in The Hague region, and multiple incidents of aid workers and first responders being attacked or harassed, according to various Dutch media. 

The year 2019 was a busy one for the Netherlands, with elections and strikes, multiple high profile murders and shootings, and a summer full of heat records, severe storms and poisonous caterpillars. Here follows a review of the top ten stories of this year. 

Geertje Kuijntjes, who became the oldest living person in the Netherlands in 2015, has died at the age of 114. The lifelong resident of Gorinchem, Zuid-Holland, was unmarried with no children, according to RTL Nieuws.

"After a long and active life, our town's oldest inhabitant, and that of the Netherlands, Ms. Geertje Kuijntjes, died on Christmas Eve," wrote Gorinchem mayor Reinie Melissant. "I wish her surviving relations the strength to adjust to this loss."

In the investigation into the criminal organization allegedly run by Ridouan Taghi, who was arrested in Dubai on Monday, the Dutch police raided eight homes and arrested six people on Tuesday night. The suspects are five men and a woman between the ages of 29 and 45 years, the police said on Wednesday.

Gokmen T., the suspected gunman in a mass shooting on a tram in Utrecht in March, did not appear in court for a proforma hearing in his case on Monday, despite a court order that he attend. A lot of violence would have been needed to get him to the courtroom, the court said. "It is not up to the suspect to dictate whether he appears or not, but under these circumstances the court refrains from forcing him to be present," the court president said, according to broadcaster NOS. 

Relatives of a missing one-year-old boy say they are very concerned about the child’s welfare after he was allegedly kidnapped by his mother. Rowena van der. V. was recently stripped of all unsupervised visitation rights with her 14-month-old son, the boy’s uncle Thijs Roseboom told Hart van Nederland