Highways England waves around £62m contract for National Traffic Information Service after brief chat with vendors Highways England is shopping for a new £62m National Traffic Information Service to help collect, process and disseminate real-time data and information about traffic on 4,300 miles (6,920km) of road. The money up for grabs has increased since the government agency published its prior information notice, which in February …
the winning supplier should remove "under-used traffic data sources, including automatic number-plate recognition"
I'm sure they'd get lower bids if they could leave the ANPR cameras in place and sell on the data to 3rd parties.
On the subject of roads is it time for a new Reg unit? 260 miles would be a Going and the return journey of the same length a Cumming so we can measure the Cummings and Goings.
The motorway I live near and use pretty much everyday got overhead dot matrix signs and live traffic information about 10 or 12 years ago. Absolutely totally useless. Signs saying lane closed, when there is no lane closed, thus causing congestions. Signs saying queue on slip road when there is not a single car waiting. Signs saying congestion ahead when the road is totally clear. Signs giving info about delays on other motorways 100 miles away, but no mention of the hour delay you are about to run into the back of. Signs saying long delays ahead when the delay is no worse than normal (5 or 10 minutes).
An utterly useless government department and utterly useless technology implementation. And as for smart motorways with no hard shoulder? Whoever thought of and approved that idea should be in prison for life on multiple counts of manslaughter.
"excessive use of the variable speed limit system when neither the traffic volume nor current conditions justify it"
Sometimes it justifies itself - switch on the signs and cause congestion.
I remember it being used on an "experimental" basis round the western section of the M25. I didn't use that section on a daily basis but it did seem odd that the days I drove round there were always the experiment days and never the control days. It was also noticeable that between the cameras the traffic flowed a little more freely and then bunched up at the next camera.
Have you noticed with the varible speed system, they often have all the signs saying 60 and then somewhere in the middle there will be just one saying 50 with a camera on it. 60 60 60 60 60 60 50 60 60 60 60. It's easy to miss if you are paying attention to the other traffic instead of the overhead signs.
"You forgot the excessive use of the variable speed limit system when neither the traffic volume nor current conditions justify it"
Don't know about the rest of the country but they are honest about it on the M1 Nottingham - Sheffield North section - the lovely overhead signs proclaim "Speed Restrictions for Air Quality Control" - on a road running through countryside with hardly any residences nearby.
"Signs saying lane closed, when there is no lane closed, thus causing congestions."
They may be new signs but it's the same old same old from the days of those signs in the central reservation although the speeds on those weren't enforceable. There's be 10 miles or so of signs saying "50" or "60" and the "End". I remember one occasion taking my daughter back to University (she's now well into her 40s) stuck in a queue for about half an hour on the M1 past Chesterfield with a 2 lane closure showing. Eventually I joined the renegades ignoring the sign and driving down the outer lanes. There was no sign of any closure. After that I ignored them totally; Mk 1 eyeball gave adequate warning of any real trouble.
Based on what I saw in a documentary last year, the signs are operated manually by Highways England in area control rooms based on what they see on the cameras, requests/information from their own patrol people and emergency services as well as reports from the public. They made no mention of any automated systems, so unless anyone knows differently, I suspect it's entirely manual. My own experience seems to back this up as it's not uncommon to see an incident with no advance signed warnings when they've just occurred and to see warnings still in place for some time after an incident is cleared.
Certainly last year it was entirely Manual. I got a call out on a Friday evening to the Highways England office nearest to me as they had lost all network and phones following a power cut earlier in the day affecting a large part of Northern England (that bit above Lancaster but below Scotland). ISTR that the reason nothing had come backup was because there was too much startup current on the breakers feeding the racks, so I worked out what needed to start first, got that up and then fetched the rest up afterwards.
Part of the testing was making sure the videowall in the Motorway Control Room was working, and the guy was telling me that he was glad it was up as he needed to set signs up for some people doing litterpicking on one of the motorways he looked after - the thing that surprised me was the sections he was looking after were nowhere near where he was based!
Why ? Is the hardware rusting ? Why can't modular elements be added ?
Why is it that, even at government level, we have a culture of consumerism and throw out the old, it's time to buy some new stuff ?
So they want to modernize. Well, here's the deal : your new system ? Make independent modules out of it. Do not make any part require all other parts to function. Also, make it so new parts can be added at a later time. That way, you can add or upgrade individual modules without having to fork out for an entire system the next time.
Or is that just too 3rd millennium for you ?
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