Revenue of civil engineering in the Netherlands 2021, by type of activity

In 2021, the civil engineering activity that generated the highest net turnover in the Netherlands was the construction of roads and motorways, with a total net turnover of over eight billion euros. This was followed by the construction of utilities for electricity and telecommunication, which had a net turnover of 3,902 million euros, and the construction of water projects with a net turnover of 3,179 million euros.

What is the level of funding for road infrastructure?

The total length of motorways in the Netherlands has not increased significantly in the past years. However, that only constituted a small share of the country’s road network. Apart from motorways, there are also national, regional, and other roads, such as the ones inside towns and cities. In fact, the public expenditure on the primary road network was expected to reach 3.9 billion euros in 2024. Although those investment levels are forecast to decrease in the next years, they will remain at several billion euros annually.

High-quality railway network

The Netherlands had over 17 billion passenger-kilometers of rail transport in 2022. That figure refers to the number of kilometers that all the users of the railway system travelled that year. Meanwhile, Dutch passengers travelled even more miles using the train in 2018 and 2019. Considering that the Netherlands is relatively small in terms of land area and population, that means that the railway infrastructure was very widely used.