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Research question

Operational traffic management

Operators in traffic control centres continuously monitor traffic and react if an incident occurs. If necessary they contact the police or fire brigade. They also try to decrease the counter effects of an incident, for example by rerouting traffic. Using traffic management measures in these cases is based on expert judgement. Rijkswaterstaat is working on decision support systems to aid the operator in taking these kind of decisions. Questions related to this subject are: How can these DSS’s help the operator? Is it possible to predict the traffic situation and situations with traffic management measures such that the operator can choose the best solution? Which… Read More »Operational traffic management

Evaluation method

The Netherlands have a great deal of experience with implementing and evaluating intelligent transport systems (ITS). Since 1990, an improved use of existing infrastructure is an important topic in the Dutch traffic and transport policy. This has resulted in numerous implementations of traffic management measures, such as ramp metering systems, route information panels, freeway traffic management systems, etcetera. The implementation of the new measures had led to new knowledge about the effects of ITS, because evaluation is common practice in The Netherlands. In such evaluations attention is paid to socio-economic aspects and impact analysis and, recently, cost-benefit analysis becomes more… Read More »Evaluation method

Network wide traffic management

In The Netherlands dynamic traffic management has always been implemented and operated on a local level. In recent years developments have been towards network wide traffic management, due to the impact of the method ‘Sustainable Traffic Management’. Network wide traffic mangement deals with the operation of and the coordination between traffic management measures. The question is how this network wide traffic management can be done. Which algorithms can used to coordinate traffic management measures and what are the resulting effects? What are the consequences for the organisation of traffic management?

Traffic management for exceptional circumstances

The possibilities of the transport system to detail with exceptional circumstances is becoming more and more important. Exceptional circumstances (large incidents, flooding, earth quakes, terroristic attacks) do not occur often, but have a large social and economic impact. Due to the rare occurences, there is little experience and knowledge on how to deal with these circumstances. A lot of questions still have to be answered. What are good traffic management strategies to reduce the impacts of large incidents and disasters? Which information do we have to provide to the road users? How can we assess these strategies? How can we… Read More »Traffic management for exceptional circumstances

How to deal with the probabilistic nature of traffic?

Traffic is probabilistic by its nature. This is due to variances in the traffic itself, such as the driver population, vehicle types, etc. But it is also due to the circumstances, like weather conditons and incidents. The question is how to deal with these variances and how to take into account the inherent variable nature of daily traffic congestion on the motorway network, when considering taking traffic management measures to alleviate this traffic congestion. Will this change the way in which existing traffic management measures are applied? Or are new measures needed to cope with this problem?

Speed limits and their effects

Since 1974 speed limits have been applied to Dutch motorways and sometimes they have been changed. The standard speed limits are 100 km/hr and 120 km/hr. Recently their is discussion about increasing these speed limits. The question is what the consequences are of this increase on traffic, safety and environment. And another question is what is a good speed limit? What are the criteria to set a speed limit?

Rush-hour lanes

Rush-hour lanes are widely used in The Netherlands. The extra lane on the hard-shoulder or on the left side of the runway is opened during a certain period of time, e.g. peak periods. The effects of rush-hour lanes are very positive. But still there a number of issues that need to be researched, such as safety issues during opening and closing the lane and the link between the design and the behaviour of the road users.

Traffic models

The use of traffic models started with the optimisation of traffic signal control plans, but since then a lot of developments took place. Nowadays a wide range of traffic models is available to answer questions related to transport planning, traffic management and operations. An important question with traffic models is the validity of the model. Is the model suitable for the application and how well does the model represent real-life circumstances? These questions remain a source of research into traffic models.

New traffic management measures

A lot of traffic management measures have been tested and implemented in The Netherlands. Well-known examples are ramp metering, motorway traffic management and variable message signs. Still, new measures or new applications of existing systems are developed, tested and evaluated. For these new measures questions can be asked about the operational application of these measures, control algorithms and effects.

Cooperative and automated driving

Cooperative and automated driving have drawn a lot of attention the last couple of years. Experiments with automated driving are held all over the world and cooperative systems are developed and implemented in cars. But what can be expected from these cooperative systems and how will they influence driving behaviour and traffic management? And how is automated driving going to change mobility and transport? And what are important transitition to achieve this and when are they going to take place?