Bas Govers

Bas Govers is the leading professional in mobility-planning at Goudappel, the company that sets the standard in mobility planning and engineering in The Netherlands since 1963 with over 250 specialists in planning, engineering, design, modeling, GIS and research. He is the program director of our international program to improve cities by mobility planning called ‘Excellent Cities’. He has over 25 years of experience in urban development, network planning and traffic engineering.

Bas Govers is much asked as a consultant for his integral way of thinking, his creativity and his technical knowledge in the field of mobility. He is able to combine interests of the relevant actors into new perspectives. In this way he has led key transport planning and urban development projects like the recent new Mobility plan for the city of Utrecht, Rotterdam and Haarlem. He has introduced several new perspectives on cycling, like the urban zoning (ABC), the three levels of cycling (dare to cycle, able to cycle and invite to cycle) and scientific research about time-evaluation for cyclists for over 12 cities and regions. In these concepts lies the ambition to make the bicycle the first mode of transport by improving urban quality and rerouting of cars in urban networks. This is a core competence of Bas Govers: traffic engineering to make more attractive, more vital and healthier cities. His approach to traffic systems is to combine cost effectiveness, spatial quality, and functional excellence.

Bas has an education as Civil Engineer at the Technical University of Delft with master thesis in Traffic Engineering and in Urban Development. During his career Bas was a leading transport engineer in nearly all major suburban housing projects in the Netherlands (VINEX). He made different masterplans for larger station areas and masterplans for public transport in every major city and urban region in The Netherlands. Often these plans were part of a larger inner-city revival plan where cycling and urban quality was leading.

Bas is a much asked speaker and lecturer for different universities and congresses. He has written a large number of articles about urban mobility planning, public transport and about the relationship between urban development and traffic engineering. He was a keynote speaker on the AGFS-congress 2020 in Essen this February. On a regular basis he gives lectures on these subjects in the universities of Gent, Antwerpen, Delft, Amsterdam and Twente. Bas was a prominent member of the external committee that was installed by the city of Amsterdam to evaluate the new cycling-links (bridges and tunnels) over the river IJ in the heart of the city.