CA Traffic, one of the UK’s leading providers of traffic monitoring equipment and software, has successfully completed a large scale upgrade of equipment for the UK’s Highways Agency.
Despite a short and challenging timescale, the Highways Agency traffic appraisal modelling and economics (TAME) network of over 1,100 traffic monitoring sites was upgraded on time and to budget.
The project was commissioned through three consulting companies, who on behalf of the HA, have been managing the sites monitoring 17,700km of major roads across England. The upgrade consisted of 1,000 CA Traffic monitoring units to include mobile communications and the supply of 180 new ‘Profiler Type-F’ classifiers. The upgrade allows the Highways Agency’s national traffic control centre (NTCC) to collect data via telemetry methods as opposed to monthly manual collection, therefore increasing the efficiency and frequency of data to one minute granularity and on a daily rather than monthly basis.
The use of telemetry data collection has considerable health and safety benefits by eliminating the requirement for engineers to be on site to collect the data. The flash upgradeable CPU allows units to receive software upgrades in the future including through mobile telecommunication and automatic updates.
The development of a bespoke, scaleable site management and telemetry system to automate the daily polling and data retrieval from the monitoring locations also formed part of the upgrade. The retrieved data is then processed and made available for import into the Highways Agency’s NTCC system. In addition, the system monitors both site and system faults, with alerts being delivered automatically.
The project has proved to be a valuable asset for the NTCC, enabling them to make optimum use of its existing road network, improving the flow of traffic with trusted, reliable, useful and effective (TRUE) traffic information to enable informed journey choices to be made.
Bernard Greene, managing director of CA Traffic, commented, “I am very proud of the performance of the CA team. Faced with a tight timescale for completion we delivered efficiently and on time. The company can now boast the supply of products and a comprehensive telemetry system to a network of over 1,000 traffic monitoring sites across England. This project reflects the client’s confidence in CA Traffic’s products and expertise.”
