TeleWare monitors Forth Road Bridge

Story link: TeleWare monitors Forth Road Bridge by Jan Harris

TeleWare, the leading provider of intelligent communication solutions to businesses and service providers, today announced the deployment of a new service to support motorists using the Forth Road Bridge.

The service is based on TeleWare’s widely adopted Intelligent Connect call management software and provided as a Hosted Service from TeleWare’s highly resilient data centres at London Docklands and Heathrow.

With over 24 million vehicles using the bridge each year, efficient traffic management is needed in order to keep traffic moving as smoothly as possible within the prevailing conditions.

For a nominal fee, motorists are now able to receive up-to-date news bulletins, advising them of any current bridge restrictions due to weather, road works or traffic incidents, together with the estimated length of delays on the three main approach roads.

Commenting on the new information service, Phil Wheeler of the Forth Estuary Transport Authority said, “This excellent new service provides accurate and up-to-the-minute bridge traffic information on demand.

“It’s been carefully developed and trialled over several months prior to its official launch and we’re confident in its reliability.”

Delays on the M90, A90 and M9 Spur are measured every four minutes by new roadside traffic sensors.

This information is automatically combined with details of bridge restrictions updated by staff in the bridge’s control room.

Bulletins are given as automated announcements, emails or as text messages and are updated every 4 minutes.

Data on traffic movements on the approach roads is provided from Trafficmaster carriageway sensors while manual input of information regarding the status of travel over the bridge itself is provided by bridge control staff.

Data from the Trafficmaster server is translated into a status code representing the estimated delay on a particular route.

Similarly, bridge staff enter a code relating to the current status of the bridge.

Within the TeleWare solution, activation of these codes result in the appropriate text or pre-recorded message being played or sent to subscribers.

Regular travellers are able to register via the Forth Road Bridge website and receive customer-selected alerts via text message or email at discounted rates.

For example, the customer may request an alert on Thursday mornings if a delay in journey time across the bridge or on the M90 in excess of 20 minutes is expected at that time. Registered users can also access the live streaming webcam at forthroadbridge.org.

Providing the solution as a TeleWare hosted service means that Forth Road Bridge do not have to provide support or maintenance to the system and can offer the service to its ‘customers’ without the capital expense normally associated with a new service deployment and without the installation and deployment delays normally associated with the roll out of a new system.

The Traffic Information solution was developed by Vemotion Interactive, a wholly owned TeleWare Group company, in conjunction with Comvista, a specialist communications business based in Glenrothes, Fife, and Camvista Global, experts in the deployment of webcams and streaming images worldwide.