Study tour Austria-Switzerland
From May 31st to June 5th, 2015 members of TrafficQuest (the Centre for Expertise on TrafficManagement) visited Austria and Switzerland for a study tour to learn how regions and cities dealt with (urban) traffic management and to see how these approaches could be used for the Dutch situation. The main question for this study tour was: How should the regions and cities handle the growth in traffic flows, both in normal situations and in situations where something special is going on? To answer this question, in five days four organisations that are busy with traffic management were visited in Austria and Switzerland: road authorities, manufacturer and a knowledge institute. The document "Study tour Austria – Switzerland: May 31 – June 5, 2015" contains a report of this trip and the lessons learned.
Flexible lane configuration for intersections
The application of flexible lane configuration for signalised intersections is sometimes beneficial for traffic delays, but sometimes not. This is the conclusion of the research conducted by Frank Anema and supported by TrafficQuest. He did his master thesis on this topic and received his MSc degree with the report entitled “Model-predictive control of the lane configuration at signalized intersections”.
Flexible lane configuration At this moment there are five intersections in the Netherlands with a flexible lane configuration. This means that during a certain period of the day an extra lane is available for a busy movement on an intersection and the same lane is available for another movement during the rest of the day.
National day for road authorities 2015
Climate change and TrafficQuest
During the ‘International Conference on Surface Transportation System Resilience to Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events’ of the TRB in Washington DC senior advisor Kees van Muiswinkel of Rijkswaterstaat presented the TrafficQuest publication "Traffic in the Netherlands" to Monica Starnes. Monica was very interested and would give a copy to her colleagues at TRB. Monica is a senior program offices and is the manager for the TRB activities related to transport policy, climate change and resilience, sustainability and socio-economic affairs. Climate change resilience is not a topic for TrafficQuest, but certainly it is for her partners. Obviously, Rijkswaterstaat is very involved, but also Delft University of Technology, which investigates for example evacuation stategies and the role of traffic management. TNO is involved in the National Adaptation Strategy.
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On thursday October 1st, 2015, the IJsseldelta center in Zwolle hosted the national day of 'road authorities meet road authorities' and 'water meets water' (in Dutch both terms abbreviate to WOW). Apart from a speech of the director of Rijkswaterstaat and chairman of WOW Jan Hendrik Dronkers and a brainstorm session with all attendees (about 450 people), also several sessions were held about various topics, such as a non-frozen bicycle bridge, the regional climate approach and cybersecurity. TrafficQuest was also present with a banner, booklets and a joint session with the National Traffic Management Platform (LVMB, in Dutch). The LVMB is a national organisation of road authorities with the purpose to explore, discuss and develop common topics in the field of traffic management. During the session