You are reading the second edition of our annual report, Traffic in the Netherlands 2015. This in itself is a good thing, since it means that we came through on our promise to provide an annual overview of the developments within our area of expertise. We really had no choice, since the reactions to our publication Traffic in the Netherlands 2014 were very positive. We would like to thank you for that! However, there are of course more compelling reasons to provide a progress report. In chapter one, we will list a number of statistics related to traffic, and they clearly reflect that the relative calm on the roads is over for the time being. The economy is picking up, and so are the traffic jams on the roads! We will have to pull out all the traffic management stops to keep our accessibility at an acceptable level in the coming years. Since cities are once again increasing in popularity and continue to grow, traffic in urban areas also deserves our attention. A variety of developments are underway, which affect the traffic flows in the urban environment: from big data to being connected and sharing of vehicles. But how and what can we expect from these developments? We will discuss this in more detail in chapter two. And what about the slightly more distant future? The fact is that we are on the eve of interesting innovations that we can safely call game changers. We are talking mainly about cooperative driving and automated driving — and ultimately perhaps cooperative automated driving. It will be a while before these developments become common and exercise their influence on the traffic system, but research and development activities in this area have already been going on in the scientific community for years. The first operational tests are already underway. And since ‘foresight is the essence of management’ also applies to this case, policy-makers and other stakeholders have ample reason to already think about the possibilities and consequences of these developments. We will discuss this in more detail in chapters three, four and five. Plenty of reasons therefore to again present all figures and developments in a new annual report. This time, we have even provided more in-depth explanations by having a few experts in the felid give their opinion. Starting at page 104, Marion Braams of Rijkswaterstaat and Laurens Schrijnen of the Innovation Lab (De Innovatiecentrale in Dutch) will discuss the future of traffic management centres. What will be their role, in light of the developments such as the transition to in-car systems? Be also sure not to miss the interview with Frans op de Beek, principal advisor on Traffic Management at Rijkswaterstaat, on page 60. His message on the Netherlands as a traffic management country is clear: “We are still a leader in traffic management and ITS, but this may soon change.” At TrafficQuest, we hope to ensure that the Netherlands maintains its leading position in the felid of traffic management. We contribute to this by collecting, analysing and disseminating knowledge. We do the latter in our reports, articles and recommendations, see www.traffc-quest.nl for an overview, but of course also with this annual report Traffic in the Netherlands 2015. (Author/publisher)
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