Gaining new insights regarding traffic congestion, by explicitely considering the variability in traffic

In the past decades, traffic congestion on the Dutch motorway network has developed into a serious problem, causing large costs to society. In this thesis (alleviating) traffic congestion is considered from a probabilistic perspective, meaning that the variability in traffic is explicitly taken into account. Traditionally, in evaluations of the effectiveness of proposed congestion relief measures this variability is taken into account only in a limited or simplified way, or even not at all. Often simply a kind of ‘representative' situation is calculated, possibly supplemented with some qualitative considerations or scenario-based analyses regarding the effects on the robustness of the traffic system. The main objective of this research project was to reveal what kind of new insights can be obtained if we actually do explicitly/systematically take into account the inherent variable nature of daily motorway congestion.