Project

The Dutch freeway network is highly developed. Almost every town and city is connected with freeways, some of which are quite close to towns and cities, the A12 near Den Haag, A13 near Delft, and A10 near Amsterdam for example. Those citizens who are living nearby those freeways, their health are suffering from traffic pollution, requiring the local and national government to take livability into account when proposing transport policies and traffic management system. The former Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieubeheer (VROM), has detected that the concentration of PM 10, PM 2.5 and NOx, which are the major… Read More »Multi-objective traffic management for livability

For many years (to be precise since 1957) a ‘speed limit’ has been applied on Dutch motorways. Such a speed limit forms the main basis of a speed policy. Then road users will have a basic indicator of the maximum speed allowed on the concerning road. So you can state that the main focus of determining a good speed policy lies in setting an appropriate, safe, and credible speed limit. However the credibility of a speed limit is often not understood. A credible speed limit is defined as a speed limit that matches the image that is evoked by the… Read More »An assessment framework for a speed policy

As welfare increases in a region or a country, it is common for the mobility of its inhabitants to increase as well, most often resulting in an increase of the number of vehicles. At increasing welfare we also see that cities are growing and the number of activities employed in these cities grow as well. This then results in more urban traffic and harder to reach city centres. To alleviate these newfound traffic problems, improvements in infrastructure and traffic measures, such as traffic lights and roundabouts, are made. Although urban traffic flow improves by these measures, it is mostly just… Read More »Application of the MFD: Subnetwork Perimeter Control

Managed lanes have been operational in the Netherlands since 1996. They are intended as a measure to increase capacity without the need to add an extra lane to the cross section. Managed lanes are designed in many forms. In the Netherlands, two main forms are applied and will be evaluated in this research: rush-hour lanes (managed lanes on the right side of a road section) and plus-lanes (managed lanes on the left side of a road section). Individually, rush-hour lanes and plus-lanes have been evaluated several times for their effectiveness. Comparing the differences in effectiveness of the two is interesting,… Read More »Effectiveness of rush-hour lanes and plus-lanes

In the fall of 2011 the reconstruction of the A15 from the Maasvlake to junction Vaanplein, also known as the MaVa project, has started. These construction works will last until 2015. This project is necessary to facilitate the increasing freight traffic from the current Maasvlakte and the 2nd Maasvlakte, which is now under construction. In this 4-year construction period the current traffic on the A15 will be hindered. This project will use user-class specific dynamic traffic management measures to reduce the economic damage these construction works will have. To apply these dynamic traffic management measures in practice, either traffic management… Read More »Analysis of scenarios using multi-class dynamic traffic management

Microscopic traffic simulation models are an important tool for transport system analysis and management. Within these models lane-changing is an important component, because lane changing is an important factor according to traffic instabilities. Two types of lane changes can be distinguished, namely mandatory and discretionary lane changes. Mandatory lane changes need to be performed to keep the route, e.g. merging at a freeway on-ramp. Discretionary lane changes are performed to improve driving conditions, e.g. to overtake a slower driving vehicle to increase speed. Because this study is about the merging behaviour on a freeway on-ramp, the focus will be on… Read More »Modelling merging behaviour on a freeway on-ramp

The road network in the Netherlands can be considered as saturated with considerable levels ofcongestion. To meet the rising problems, policies are developed to increase road capacity at several places and to introduce a general congestion charge to discourage road use during peak hours. Until a short while ago, mobility policy focused mainly on reducing travel times. But we have recently come to realise that travelling time reliability is at least as important to travellers, hauliers and shippers. The importance of travelling time reliability for passenger and goods traffic has been acknowledged by government and local authorities. With the introduction… Read More »HOT lanes – Implementation issues in the Netherlands

Common current methods to measure traffic include induction loops, license plate recognition cameras, radar, laser and GSM. In the Netherlands, but also worldwide, induction loops are the most widely used traffic sensors. Induction loops however can be unreliable and not accurate enough for some applications. Traffic intensity and speed are only measured where loops are available. A typical distance between loop detectors on Dutch motorways is 500 meters. Video based monitoring can give more detailed information but also has its limitations and drawbacks, like costs and low detection rate in case of bad weather and at night. The traffic data… Read More »In-vehicle sensor data for traffic management

Greater accessibility in the Netherlands is a goal that is being pursued for a long time. With regard to transportation it refers to the ease of reaching destinations from various locations. The improvement of the accessibility is beneficial for every road user, because it leads to a better flow of the traffic. An improvement of the traffic flow allows road users to adjust their behaviour before and during their time on the highways. Nowadays the information of inductive loop detectors is used to measure the traffic flow. However, automobiles and the roads they are driving on, are equipped with a… Read More »In-vehicle sensor data for traffic management II

Traffic control measures aim at improving traffic conditions or minimizing externalities caused by road traffic. These measures are usually optimized for one specific goal (e.g. minimizing total time spent) and one specific situation (e.g. peak-hour traffic) on a specific part of the network. This means that for other goals, situations or parts of the network conditions might decline due to this measure. Integrated Network Management (INM) is focussed on coordinating traffic measures from a network perspective to prevent negative effects of isolated measures and strive for one common objective. In the light of INM this thesis focuses on the integration… Read More »Coordination of traffic control with in-car route guidance