Abstract
The ongoing increase of car use leads to more and severe congestion on the motorway network in The Netherlands. Buffers are mentioned as an important tool to make the current motorway network perform better. A buffer can be described as an area upstream of a bottle-neck in which, due to the increased width of the road segment, cars are stored in such a way that the tail of the queue doesn't obstruct other traffic streams. In this study, the interaction between the impact on traffic flows and the design is analysed with the traffic simulation model INTEGRATION. (A)