Highways England’s £1.5bn A14 project is thought to be the first to employ real-time journey information from the National Traffic Operations Centre (NTOC) for use on portable variable message signs (VMS).
The system helps the roughly 85,000 drivers a day that use the the 21-mile stretch of road involved in the Cambridge to Huntingdon upgrade scheme maintain journey reliability by giving them live information on how long it will take to navigate the road works.
The A14 Integrated Delivery Team (IDT), working on behalf of Highways England, contracted Mobile Visual Information System’s (MVIS) to deploy its largest DATEX JTS to date, incorporating 26 VMS.
The Bartco UK VMS-Cs display journey times from their locations to the end of the affected stretch of road, informing drivers of the predicted journey duration.
Journey times are calculated using DATEX II data collected from in-vehicle sensors and relayed by NTOC.
The A14 IDT’s project director, Mark Berg, said: ‘MVIS’ pioneering DATEX JTS enables us to provide accurate and easily interpreted journey time information to drivers as they navigate the stretch of road on which we are working.
‘Together with Highways England, we aim to optimise road users’ experience and this new solution is helping us to achieve that objective as we strive to deliver long-term improvements to this exceptionally busy route.’
Graeme Lee, MVIS’ sales manager said: ‘We’re delighted to have this opportunity to implement our new solution on such a significant project.’
Due to finish in 2020, the complex A14 scheme includes a new bypass to the south of Huntingdon, carriageway widening on the existing A14 between Swavesey and Girton and improvements to the Cambridge northern bypass.
It also includes junction improvements, the widening of the A1 trunk road between Brampton and Alconbury and new local access roads. The viaduct over the East Coast Main Line railway at Huntingdon is to be removed and road connections to the existing A14 from within the town modified.
