THE IMPACTS OF THE AMSTERDAM RINGROAD: FIVE YEARS AFTER

The Amsterdam Ringroad was completed in September 1990. The outcomes of the Amsterdam Ringroad Study have been presented at several conferences and in journals (e.g. Transportation, No. 1 of 1996). The main conclusions were that the opening of the Ringroad had caused large shifts in departure time choice and route choice, but that the changes in mode choice and choice of travel frequency and destination were relatively small. These outcomes have received considerable attention, not only in The Netherlands, but also abroad (e.g. in the SACTRA discussions in the UK and the induced demand studies for the European Community). The above results from the Amsterdam Ringroad Study are in fact short term outcomes: they refer to a one-year period. For the longer term, only model predictions of the impact using the Netherlands' National Model System (NMS), were available. In this paper the traffic outcomes of the opening of the Amsterdam Ringroad for a five-year period are presented. These outcomes are based on actual traffic counts. Roughly 2/3 of the observed growth in car traffic on the relevant screenline can be attributed to autonomous developments. After correcting for autonomous growth (the influence of factors such as population and employment growth), the increase in traffic turns out to be only a few percent higher than the short run effects of the opening on total screenline traffic. This observation is in line with the NMS predictions. It is concluded that most of the growth in car traffic which was induced by the opening of the Ringroad occurred in the first year after opening. In this paper, the main outcomes of a study into the impacts of the opening of the Wijkertunnel are also presented. This tunnel crosses the same screenline, but is located more to the west, close to the existing heavily congested Velsertunnel. The primary aim of the Wijkertunnel, which was opened in July 1996, was to relieve this bottleneck. The impacts of this project on travel behaviour and traffic patterns have been investigated using before-and-after-studies (both interviews and counts). For the covering abstract see IRRD E103853.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Features: References;
  • Pagination: p. 237-48

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00782837
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
  • ISBN: 0-86050-313-5
  • Files: ITRD
  • Created Date: Feb 7 2000 12:00AM