Overbetuwe

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Country	Netherlands
Overbetuwe

Province	Gelderland
Area (2006)
- Municipality	115.18 km² (44.5 sq mi)
- Land	109.59 km² (42.3 sq mi)
- Water	5.59 km² (2.2 sq mi)
Population (1 January 2007)
- Municipality	43,154
- Density	394/km² (1,020.5/sq mi)
	Source: CBS, Statline.
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
- Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)

Overbetuwe is a municipality in the province of Gelderland in the eastern Netherlands. It was formed on January 1, 2001 as a merger of 3 former municipalities: Elst, Heteren and Valburg. It is bordered in the north by the river Rhine, and in the south by the Waal. Right through the middle flows the Linge. The town hall is located in Elst, which is the largest town. Together with 18 other municipalities it forms Knooppunt Arnhem-Nijmegen (Arnhem-Nijmegen junction in English), or simply KAN, which is a regional collaboration. Together with the municipality of Lingewaard it forms the region of Over-Betuwe, the part of the Betuwe region after which the municipality is named.

1 Population centres
2 Politics
3 Transportation
4 External link

[edit] Population centres

Andelst, Driel, Elst, Hemmen, Herveld, Heteren, Homoet, Loenen, Oosterhout (partly), Randwijk, Slijk-Ewijk, Valburg and Zetten.

[edit] Politics

Party	Seats	Change from 2002
CDA	7	-
PvdA	6	+3
Gemeentebelangen	5	-
D66	3	-1
VVD	3	-
GroenLinks	2	-
ChristenUnie	1	-
Total	27	+2

The mayor of this municipality is E. Tuijnman.

The distribution of council seats after the 2006 elections (because of the increased population the total number of seats went up from 25 to 27) is shown on the right. After these elections CDA, PvdA, VVD and D66 formed a broad coalition.

[edit] Transportation

Because of its central location between the cities of Nijmegen and Arnhem, a lot of the inhabitants of Overbetuwe commute to these two cities.

Three major highways are situated in the municipality: the A50, A15 and A325.

Overbetuwe has two railway stations (Elst and Zetten-Andelst), and besides the two existing railway lines, a controversial freight line called the Betuweroute will be operational in 2007.