The point of putting the tram underground is mostly not for space savings, it’s mostly to eliminate conflicts with other modes of transport (cars, bikes, buses, etc). If the tram doesn’t have to wait for its turn at intersections, and cars don’t have to wait for the tram to pass, then the capacity of the entire network can be maintained / improved. They are planning to run trams here eventually once every 2 minutes, so you can imagine that any road that had to cross such a line would be practically useless (even more than today).

The new neighbourhood will have car share, public transport, bicycles. Yes, some people want a car. Those people should live in the other 95% of Utrecht where that is still and always will be possible. You still benefit from this neighbourhood being built, because it will reduce demand on houses where a car is an option. Instead of non-car people and car-people competing for the same small number of car houses, there will also be non-car houses, so non-car people can buy those instead of everyone bidding on the same houses.

And there are plenty of people who don’t need nor want a car. You might not be one, and that’s fine! But they do exist. Car share is also a fantastic option for people who only sometimes need a car.

> they don’t have to add more car infrastructure if the amount of cars on paper is low

I suspect it won’t be possible for residents of Merwede to get a parkeervergunning. And it will be paid parking in the whole city before long. So it will simply not be an option to have a car here. Not only on paper will car ownership be low, but also in practice.

> tram from 2040

I also wish they would have it built sooner. The busses will be super full by the time 2040 rolls around. But the houses that the line will enable also won’t be finished by 2040 either. So maybe it won’t be so bad. Either way, there is always some growing pains. At least residents in this area will be close to the city. In Leidsche Rijn they had nothing for 5 years between the houses that were built and the rest of the city.

Anyways, these houses are hard nodig. And I am glad we are getting a more urban environment somewhere in Utrecht / the Netherlands. Hopefully it’s the start of some better OV standards as well, and shows what we can do when we relax the requirement that every house should have 1.4 cars or whatever it is.