Qualla: A4 motorway (Netherlands)

A4 motorway (Netherlands): Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dickelbers, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is a stretch of the A4 between Delft and Schiedam that took half a century to argue about and four years to build. For decades, drivers heading from The Hague toward Rotterdam had only the parallel A13 to rely on, a road so chronically clogged that Dutch traffic reporters spoke of it the way sailors speak of difficult weather. The missing seven-kilometer link through Midden-Delfland - peat-meadow polder country, beloved and protected - had been sketched on planning maps in the 1930s and crossed out by every government that followed. When it finally opened in December 2015, lowered partly below ground to soothe the landscape, it ended one of the longest road-planning sagas in Dutch history. The A4 is full of stories like that.

Image: Dickelbers | CC BY-SA 3.0

A4 motorway (Netherlands): A road built in pieces

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Globe-trotter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Officially the A4 runs 119 kilometers from southeastern Amsterdam to the Belgian border near Zandvliet, just north of Antwerp. In practice, it has spent most of its life as a series of disconnected fragments. Construction began in the 1930s with high standards for the era, and a ...

Image: Globe-trotter | CC BY-SA 3.0

A4 motorway (Netherlands): Aqueducts instead of bridges

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit S.J. de Waard, CC BY 2.5. Driving south from Amsterdam, you cross water repeatedly without seeing it. The A4 dives under the Ringvaart canal, under the Oude Rijn river, under the Nieuwe Maas through the Beneluxtunnel, and under the Steenbergse Haven near Steenbergen. These are not the soaring cable-stayed...

Image: S.J. de Waard | CC BY 2.5

A4 motorway (Netherlands): Midden-Delfland and the missing link

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0. Of all the segments of the A4, none stirred up more feeling than the one between Delft and the Kethelplein interchange in Schiedam. Midden-Delfland is the kind of Dutch landscape that exists on postcards - low green polders dotted with cattle, drainage ditches catching the light,...

Image: Ymblanter | CC BY-SA 4.0

A4 motorway (Netherlands): Steenbergen and the demolished fort

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit bertknot from scarborough, australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. Further south, the A4 makes a long curve westward around Steenbergen, an old fortified town in North Brabant. The road runs past the outline of Fort Henricus - a structure long demolished, leaving only the shape of earthworks in the ground. Here the highway dives again, this time...

Image: bertknot from scarborough, australia | CC BY-SA 2.0

A4 motorway (Netherlands): What is still missing

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Milliped, CC BY-SA 4.0. Even now, the A4 is not whole. Between the Benelux interchange near Schiedam and the A29 near Klaaswaal, a twelve-kilometer gap remains. The plan was approved as far back as 1961, and the right-of-way still sits reserved on government maps. Supporters argue the link would relieve...

Image: Milliped | CC BY-SA 4.0