Managed motorways, hard shoulder running aids safety, saves time

Paul Unwin talks to ITS International about future Managed Motorways deployments in England

The announcement that, in 2012/13, work to extend Managed Motorways to Junctions 5-8 of the M6 near Birmingham in the West Midlands is scheduled to start marks the next step for the UK's hard shoulder running concept, first introduced on the M42 in 2006.

The M6 scheme is in fact one of several announced; over the next few years work will start on applying Managed Motorways to various sections of the M1, M25 London Orbital, M60 and M62.

According to Paul Unwin, senior project manager with the 503 Highways Agency, which operates strategic roads in England, the newer schemes will build on lessons learned from those already delivered by the Agency.

The M42, being the pilot scheme for Managed Motorways, was perhaps over-engineered. In some respects this is because it has been the proving ground for the concept, in others it is because of the business culture in the UK.

Initial concepts

"We had a one-line business case for the M42, 'Prove you can traffic-manage the hard shoulder safely in the UK'," says Unwin.

"The Netherlands already has around 186 miles (300km) of hard shoulder running and we maintain very close contact with the Rijkwaterstaat on operational development. There are some key differences, however. The Netherlands is going from two to three-lane running whereas we're going from three to four. The topography in the Netherlands is different; the terrain is flatter and the roads tend to be longer and straighter. Also, culturally the UK is coming off the back of some major public-sector transport-related accidents, such as the Selby and Potters Bar rail crashes, and there are very different risk assessment criteria. The main interest of the 1854 UK's Transport Select Committee was 'Will it be safe?' to which our answer, based on the Dutch experience, was 'Yes.'

"We used the GALE [Globally At Least Equivalent] process, which dictates that if you're introducing a risk somewhere you must remove another elsewhere so that the result is no less safe than what existed before. After a very comprehensive risk assessment, gantries on the M42 were spaced 500-800m apart and initial hard shoulder running was at 50mph, not the 70mph national speed limit normal for three-lane running. Over the period from September 2006 to mid-2007 this was increased to 60mph on a southbound section of the M42 between junctions 4 and 3a. There was very little change to incident rates and in fact the new limit proved popular for some unexpected reasons. At 50mph, traffic throughput tended to be governed by the slowest vehicles, typically large freight vehicles. Freight industry representatives really liked the increased limit - at 50mph, cars appeared to be competing with lorries, whereas an increase to 60mph seemed to introduce some form of separation between traffic types."

Deployed technology

An inevitable aspect of Managed Motorways is the very high levels of equipment visibility, both that for driver information such as Variable Message Signs (VMS) and Advanced Motorway Indicators (AMI) as well as the CCTV and other systems uses for monitoring and speed enforcement cameras. It was

important that drivers understood that the technology being introduced was to support the operation of the scheme and to keep them informed of traffic conditions, with the speed enforcement systems being used to encourage compliance.

"We've a handful of enforcement cameras on the M42/M6
deployment, which is probably less than most people

Going undercover

Especially when it comes to equipment set-up and testing, there have been major changes in how things are done.

"A lot of equipment goes into a scheme such as this," says Unwin. "For instance, for the implementation of the M6 Managed Motorways scheme between Junctions 8 and 10A which opened to traffic in March 2011 we procured around 40 gantries. Each of these is a substantial construction integrating a lot of systems; the numbers of MS4 Variable Message Signs [VMS] and Advanced Motorway Indicators [AMIs] number in the hundreds.

"Traditionally, such systems would be assembled in the open on a brownfield site at the side of the road. For the Birmingham Box scheme we took over a large-sized building, like a distribution warehouse, near to the deployment sites, constructed the gantries and signs whilst undercover in the warehouse, and carried out testing of signage and other systems before they were even delivered to the site for installation. Signs are hooked up to the roadside controllers which will be used in operation and scroll through message sets for at least 100 hours. That gives us a high degree of confidence in how the systems will perform in real life and has had a very positive effect on manufacturers' quality control regimes.

"Warehouse assembly and installation has additional benefits in terms of productivity; there's no spending the first hour each morning defrosting or cleaning components because everything is done in a controlled environment. It's safer, in that the work isn't going on at the roadside and has proven good for workforce retention. These are the sorts of benefits that you don't appreciate until you get on and try working like people anticipate," Unwin continues. "These are digital spot enforcement systems. We are looking, with the Home Office, at an average speed system." Journey time monitoring uses "pretty standard" automatic number plate recognition technology which is scrambled and anonymised to protect privacy. A report produced for the HA by consultants Mott MacDonald has shown that over three years the number of incidents on the M42 Managed Motorways scheme has more than halved since hard shoulder running was introduced - with the severity of incidents also significantly reduced.

Incident detection uses a combination of Motorway Incident Detection & Automatic Signalling (MIDAS) loops and both fixed and pan-tilt-zoom CCTV cameras. Managed Motorways operation tends to be manpower-intensive, relying as it does on large numbers of operatives watching the feedback from large numbers of cameras. Nevertheless, Unwin notes, this works.

"Operators view a call to report an incident before they've spotted it almost as a personal failure - of course, it isn't. You do tend to see things happen - the puff of smoke from a puncture, for instance - but most vehicles manage to make it to the Emergency Refuge Areas (ERAs) which are collocated with the gantries. If there's a stoppage in lanes three or four, a red 'X' is posted on the gantries upstream. Because we get very good compliance, we get immediate protection. Our on-road HA Traffic Officers respond to any incidents as quickly as they can."

Trialled technologies

Various technologies have been trialled by the HA, including radar-based detection and intelligent cameras, but according to Unwin these have achieved limited success to date.

"Vision systems work well in controlled environments, such as tunnels and underpasses where there is nothing to interfere with the image, but less so in the open due to the weather and light conditions typical in the UK. Radar-based systems have been tested and are still out there but the principle issue with both is their high false alarm rates; one of our primary aims with the introduction of any new technology is to reduce, not add to, the amount of equipment we've already got out there and the manpower-intensiveness of its operation. Radar, for example, doesn't take technology away for us - you still need to confirm with a camera what it's detected. The technology will improve but in our experience it's just not there yet."

Benefits

Results published in March 2011 in the Highways Agency's three-year safety report into the pilot Managed Motorway scheme on the M42 show that accidents involving personal injury reduced by more than half (56 per cent), with zero fatalities. Casualties per billion vehicle miles travelled have reduced by just under two-thirds (61 per cent) since hard shoulder running was introduced.

A short-term period monitoring hard shoulder running on sections of the 'Birmingham Box' between Junction 16 of the M40 and Junction 5 of the M6 shows an average daily saving of about 2 minutes per vehicle for a return journey in peak periods.

Two thirds (66 per cent) of road users surveyed report that using the hard shoulder as an additional lane had improved the 'Birmingham box' motorway sections of the M40, M42 and M6.

Other benefits included an improvement in journey time reliability, Unwin says: "We're helping to make journey times more reliable - so drivers know how long their journey is going to take and can then plan accordingly - this is important for both social and business reasons, for example for freight scheduling.

"Anything that can improve journey time reliability, and indeed journey times, is going to be a welcome boost to businesses, helping to reduce their costs but also attracting business to the area."

Cost and delivery

Out-turn cost of the initial M42 deployment has been given as £100 million, with delivery inside a couple of years. By comparison, just to increase capacity by an additional lane in the same geographical location would have cost £500 million even before the addition of any of the technology which operation of a modern motorway requires. Going outside the current Highways Agency land boundaries, compulsory purchases of land and public consultations could have taken upwards of a decade even before construction started.

"There are several aspects to this. While you're designing a widening scheme which can take a number of years to deliver, you're not accepting that technological development over that period of time might mean we do things very differently by the time things are operational," says Unwin. "Managed Motorways is now an effective choice for delivering improvements to key stretches of motorway, especially where traffic experiences significant peaks and troughs."

International interest in Managed Motorways has been considerable. Unwin has received visitors from a dozen countries from around the world.

"To those who are considering such a solution, I'd say prove your concept first, do your research and engage with your stakeholders too. It will cost you time and money to do so in the short-term, but it is well worth it. You can then review your technology and scheme design once your scheme is delivered and then make any modifications from there."

Sanef deploys new traffic operations system

By October next year, sanef, part of the albertis group, will have implemented a new, unified traffic operations system right across its French network. At present, operational control is split; roads to the west of Paris use a system which has been in place for well over a decade, whilst those to the north and east of Paris use a newer solution which was first fielded in April 2010.

Largely as a result of some unique operational requirements, sanef has developed the new system entirely in-house, according to Jean-Marie Deck, head of traffic management.

"The age of the former system in the north and east made it difficult to implement newer technologies so it was inadequate in comparison with more modern systems when it comes to incident management.

"The new system, AMELIE, currently operates on 1,500km of roads to the north and east of Paris and was developed with extension to the west in mind. A big feature of the new system are predefined action plans to help operators to deal with an incident or emergency. Choices made automatically by the systems allow point-and-click functionality. Activation of the appropriate signage and radio messages as well as notification of the appropriate emergency services and other first responders is all included. The main aim is to minimise the time it takes from an event occurring on the network to drivers being informed." AMELIE has three parts. The first, SSTG, communicates between the traffic operations system and all roadside equipment including sensors and Variable Message Signs (VMS). The second, SYCAR, provides a common information base for all operations. The last is the traffic management team's interface, SEXTAN, which is where the various action plans reside.

The SSTG portion allows for future growth in the numbers of sensors, the ability to work with automatic incident detection systems and expansion of sanef's travel time information systems. Another aim is geo-localisation of all of the company's vehicles and intervention staff as part of efforts to maximise safety and asset management on the busiest areas of the network (where traffic levels can reach up to 100,000 vehicles per day).

The system provides strategic and tactical management of sanef's roads and provides a source of high-quality and timely data for wider dissemination to customers. sanef support a wide range of channels, such as a dedicated radio service, web services, the VMS alongside the motorways, SMS alerts for certain road works and a DATEX feed.

Traffic information through services such as satellite navigation, internet, mobile internet and television broadcasts is co-ordinated nationally in France, where all toll road operators send traffic information to Autoroutes Trafic. Autoroutes Trafic is mainly owned by the French motorway concessionaires and also provides a range of new and flexible traffic information services across the entire French network.