Highways Agency selects IPL to help drive Smart Motorway scheme
Connected devices, sensors and other technology used to drive up safety and capacity on UK roads
The Highways Agency is using software provided by Bath-based IPL to improve the performance of its Smart Motorways Programme, which uses connected sensors and devices to improve the safety and capacity of major highways across the UK.
IPL tools have been used to speed up road scheme rollouts, provide new graphical interfaces for many Smart Motorways systems, and halve the time it takes to test new roadside equipment.
The Highways Agency said Smart Motorways technology enables it to much more efficiently direct traffic management by adjusting speed limits, opening the hard shoulder when required or displaying warnings to drivers.
Many of the processes are carried out automatically through the use of internet-connected sensors that perform activities such as detecting how quickly traffic is moving on a stretch of road then adjusting speed limits or providing advanced warnings to motorists accordingly.
Russell Mead, the Highways Agency's technical project manager for the traffic management systems, said IPL's tools play a vital role within the Smart Motorways scheme.
"The tools we have available to us now have halved the time it takes us to test new equipment after a change to the data, or ahead of a major road scheme go-live," he said.
"We can quickly trial a set-up, easily see whether each piece of road-side equipment has been configured correctly, and verify the impact a scheme will have on the rest of the network."
Mead revealed that IPL's tools slashed the time it took the Highways Agency to make recent improvements to the M25.
"When we were testing the new equipment for the M25's new All Lanes Running scheme, for example, it took us around two weeks. Without the enhancements that IPL has made to the tools, it would have taken at least twice as long," he said.
Mead explained that the Highways Agency wants to install more sensors across the network to drive further efficiencies.
"We're putting a lot more kit out on the network and we need to make some enhancements to speed up the rollout and implementation," he said.
"It's currently a sequential process: you do one piece of equipment, then the next, then the next. If you've got 10 changes to make, you've got to do each one in turn before you can do the testing - it can't be done in parallel," continued Mead.
"We're working on ways to do this in parallel, which will shave significant time off any major road scheme," he added.
Jo White, team leader for the National Operational Systems team in the Traffic Technology Division at the Highways Agency described how the agency's relationship with IPL aided the rollout of the scheme.
"Throughout the time we've worked with IPL, we've been impressed, and have extended the contract with them on a number of occasions. What we spend per annum on IPL is minute in comparison to the agency's major projects budget," White said.
"The relative benefit is huge: the work my team, IPL and our other partners do is one of the key enablers of the network running at full capacity," White continued.
"Everything we do is geared towards improving safety and traffic flows, while providing better value for money by streamlining the way we run the network. IPL has proved to be a valuable partner in our efforts to keep Britain moving."
The Highways Agency is looking to work with IPL to make future enhancements to Britain's roads. Plans include re-engineering the tools to make them web-based, making them more easily available to a greater number of Highways Agency staff and redesigning the tools and processes to enable parallel entry of data for multiple roadside assets in order to speed up rollouts.