In The Netherlands traffic management is being considered a serious policy option to deal with traffic congestion and its negative impact on economy, safety and livability. Building new roads is often not feasible due to a lack of space, environmental and funding issues. Also, pricing is not an option for the next couple of years due to political reasons. That leaves traffic management as the way to move forward to deal with the still increasing amount of mobility. The purpose of traffic management is to inform, induce and, if necessary, direct road users towards a safer and more efficient use of the existing infrastructure while safeguarding the quality of the environment of those living and working in the vicinity of the road network. This can be done using a number of traffic management measures, varying from a dynamic use of the infrastructure and signals to control traffic to information about the current traffic situation. All these measures have been widely implemented in The Netherlands and are used on a daily basis to manage traffic for regular and irregular traffic conditions. From 2 to 10 October 2010 members of TrafficQuest, the Centre for Expertise on Traffic Management) visited the United States of America for a scanning tour to learn about the situation at the other side of the Atlantic. (Author/publisher)
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