The Dutch freeway network is highly developed. Almost every town and city is connected with freeways, some of which are quite close to towns and cities, the A12 near Den Haag, A13 near Delft, and A10 near Amsterdam for example. Those citizens who are living nearby those freeways, their health are suffering from traffic pollution, requiring the local and national government to take livability into account when proposing transport policies and traffic management system. The former Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieubeheer (VROM), has detected that the concentration of PM 10, PM 2.5 and NOx, which are the major traffic pollutants badly influencing human beings’ health most, are quite high in the areas nearby the freeways. The outcome is the some illness like lung disease is more popular in these areas leading to higher death rate.
The new Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, is responsible for the problem mentioned. It owns the road network, detects the concentration of pollutants, reports to Europe Commission located in Brussels and comes up with solution if the detected pollutant concentrations in excess of the limits set in the laws and rules. Dienst Verkeer en Scheepvaart, also shortens for DVS, deals with the traffic problems and provides transport service, is a part of Rijkswatersttat who now belongs to the Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu. The issue, how to eliminate the negative impact from the road transport, which is in general the harms to citizens’ health caused by the traffic pollution in the areas near the freeways, without harming mobility, requires DVS to looking for a balanced solution. In this paper, the proposed solution is to utilize the concept of multi‐objective traffic management to improve livability on the freeway stretches close to towns and cities, while maintaining the existing mobility.
The main research question of the project is: How to improve livability, without harming existing mobility on the freeway stretches close to towns and cites in The Netherlands, using multi-objective traffic management? The sub-research questions are the following: What is the state-of-the-art on multi-objective traffic management? How to design a multi-objective traffic management system to improve livability, while ensuring the exisiting mobility? How to evaluate the effects of a certain multi-objective traffic management application on livability and mobility? Dynamic speed limits is taken as an example.