In his opening speech on October 4, 1996 Camille Paulus, governor of the province of Antwerp at the time, mentioned the 'multimodal traffic model', a computer model developed to study mobility in the Antwerp area. At the governor's request, this model was used to elaborate a solution to congestion problems in and around Antwerp. From this model, it was deduced that an additional river crossing would lead to a spectacular amelioration of mobility and practically relegate congestion on the Antwerp ring road to the past. Eddy Peetermans, who was responsible for the realization of this traffic model for the province of Antwerp, presented as the solution a 5 km long underground road – a tunnel. Because of financial restrictions, this would take the form of a combination of demand control measures (toll, communal traffic etc.) and demand driven measures (more infrastructure). Completing the Ring Road by means of a northern addition would be the only way to prevent total traffic chaos in 2010, was the engineer's conclusion at the time.