In order to get insight into the acquisition costs of land for infrastructure, a number of
regional divisions of Rijkswaterstaat (a department of the Ministry of Transport, Public
Works and Water Management responsible for the provision of infrastructure) have been
approached.11 For a detailed description of how we arrived at the land prices in this study see
Bruinsma et al. (2000). Based on the information of prices of various types of land
transactions, the following land prices will be used to compute the land-related costs of
infrastructure. For direct land use the acquisition costs inside the built-up area (at the urban
fringe) varied from 18 to 27 Euro. Therefore, we assume that the average acquisition costs
inside the built-up area are 23 Euro per m2
. This price is based on the average compensation
landowners receive when their agricultural land is expropriated for urban expansion (either
dwellings or industrial sites). Outside the built-up area the acquisition costs varied from
approximately 6.5 to 13.5 Euro. The average acquisition costs are therefore assumed to be
approximately 10 Euro per m2
. This price is the average compensation landowners receive
when the land alongside the new infrastructure remains in use for agricultural purposes.
For indirect land use claims it is not so easy to develop an appropriate evaluation of the
opportunity costs. One might be tempted to use the same valuation as for the direct land use
claims, but this would obviously lead to an overestimation because it might be that the
constraints imposed are not binding