HA trials real-time information system

The Highways Agency (HA) is trialing a system to add commercially available traffic data to its existing sources to monitor how well traffic is flowing on England’s motorways and strategic roads. Similar data sources are already used by satellite navigation devices, smartphones, and applications such as Google maps. The agency hopes that the new technology will dramatically improve real-time traffic information available to drivers. Better real-time data will also allow HA staff to respond more quickly to incidents and identify delays and communicate them to drivers to they can take alternative routes if necessary. On the M25 and its feeder routes, a different technology has been successfully trialed to measure journey times. The M25 scheme uses data that is routinely collected by mobile network operators to monitor signal strengths and network coverage. The scheme to improve the quality of information provided to drivers uses data that comes mostly from vehicle tracking devices installed by fleet operators, and a proportion from mobile satnav-type devices, including smartphone traffic applications where the user has opted in to making their anonymous location data available.

Improving reliability is an agency priority and the new system, which uses anonymous location data from mobile devices, provides accurate data which will inform the planning of future measures to reduce congestion. Simon Sheldon-Wilson, the HA’s traffic management director, said, “We are committed to reducing congestion and improving journey time reliability on the strategic road network. These new sources of data will strengthen the information we receive about traffic conditions. At the moment control rooms collect information from cameras and a vast number of sensors built into the road surface. But if an incident happens out of camera shot, or if the traffic does not queue back to one of the sensor locations, we don’t have a full picture of the problem and there can be delays responding. This new approach would allow us to work with GPS data, which will give us the most accurate and comprehensive data set to manage traffic flow and clear up incidents as quickly as possible. The information used for the M25 scheme is historic, not immediate, but will help us develop improvements targeted to reduce congestion and improve reliability.”

8 August 2012