The M10 Amsterdam beltway : effects of opening upon travel behaviour

September 28, 1990, the gap in the motorway circle around Amsterdam was closed officially. It has important consequences for the travel and traffic pattern around Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands. Completion of this major infrastructure project provides an outstanding opportunity to study the effects of infrastructural changes upon travel behavior and traffic patterns. An extensive before-and-after study was carried out to analyse these effects. This paper gives an insight into the present and future traffic situation. Solving bottlenecks in the trunk-road network often causes a one-off growth of the traffic by car on that bottleneck location during the peakhour. It is often assumed that this is newly generated traffic. Most of the additional traffic at the bottleneck, however, can be explained by shifts in time-of-day (a return to the most preferred part of the peak period) as well as a shift in routes used. Special attention was given to an explanation of this "latent demand" phenomenon through measuring and modeling changes in departure time, route choice, mode and destination choice of the car and public transport users.