DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL TRAFFIC MONITORING SYSTEM IN THE NETHERLANDS

The Dutch highway authorities are currently implementing a monitoring system which will provide real-time detailed high quality information about the traffic situation on the entire motorway network in 1999, and in 2002 on all major parts of the secondary road network. This road network monitoring system was developed in the period 1989 to 1994. In 1995 the evaluation results of a pilot project in the region of Rotterdam resulted in the start of the implementation on the entire primary road network, which consists of 2200 km of national motorways and about 400 km of other main roads of national importance. This means the implementation of about 10,000 lane detectors at about 800 strategic locations in the highway network. 40% of these locations will be combined with those of the Motorway Traffic Management system which is now being implemented on about 900 km of the most congested parts of the national highways. The system will generate a real-time overview of the current traffic flow. This information will be essential for many traffic management measures (traffic information, ramp metering, travel time predictions, dynamic route information panels, etc.), but can also be used in the definition and evaluation of policy at regional and national levels. A network of 7 regional processing systems will link the information to regional traffic control centre's (TCCs) and a national traffic information centre (TIC). The total costs for the implementation of the network of monitoring locations and processing systems is estimated at about US $90 million. The paper presents an overview of the system set-up, the further development of the monitoring network system and summarizes the strategies for national implementation in the period 1996 to 1999.