Traffic Control Centre
In March 2001, Traffic Information Services (a wholly owned subsidiary of Serco) were selected by the UK Highways Agency to deliver and operate its National Traffic Control Centre project, a 10-year €240M Public-Private Partnership contract to deliver and operate an accurate traffic information service for road users and transport operators throughout England.
Key activities have included the construction of a new National Traffic Control Centre building at Junction 3 of the M5 motorway in the Midlands region. Implementation of the project also includes a national up-to-the-minute traffic monitoring network, supported by a computer system and communications to link to a wide range of existing traffic monitoring and information systems, and the creation of a public internet site.
The National Traffic Control Centre is working closely with organisations such as the Police Service and local highway authorities under national and local agreements on operating procedures.
The implementation phase includes the installation of 98 variable message signs to complement some 300 existing signs, the installation and connection to some 3,000 traffic monitoring stations to gather flow, speed and occupancy data and automatic number-plate recognition equipment to gather journey time data. The existing communications infrastructure ha been upgraded to a Broadband Network.