Skip to main content

Innovative vehicle test track

Lafarge Contracting is helping build a sophisticated test track for future vehicles. Prototype vehicles are now being driven today on the new test track built by Lafarge. The pioneering cityscape circuit replicates the road network of an urban environment but is equipped with sophisticated telemetry, communications, monitoring and vehiclecontrol technologies.
February 24, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
3180 Lafarge Contracting is helping build a sophisticated test track for future vehicles.

Prototype vehicles are now being driven today on the new test track built by Lafarge.

The pioneering cityscape circuit replicates the road network of an urban environment but is equipped with sophisticated telemetry, communications, monitoring and vehiclecontrol technologies.

Created for 3182 innovITS, a private firm set up by the last government to drive innovation in transport, the test track is said to be the world's first purpose-built centre for the development of intelligent transport systems. Located at 3158 MIRA headquarters, near Nuneaton, the new innovITS Advance City Circuit features junctions, intersections, roundabouts and multi-lane highways with a range of surfaces, together with traffic signals, CCTV and catwalk gantries allowing installation of overhead equipment for testing, monitoring and signage.

Lafarge was appointed to carry out two rounds of work on the circuit, which has been specially designed to test the next-generation of ultra-smart cars featuring advances such as on-board pedestrian-detection and collisionavoidance intelligence. Lafarge worked with innovITS to deliver the two construction phases of innovITS' Advance City Circuit. This involved working to tight deadlines and budgets to produce an innovative facility despite unexpected changes and severe weather. For the contractor this provided an unusual and challenging scheme and the firm built 4km of track, installed all the drainage, power and data cabling, threaded the whole circuit with fibre optics and erected four overhead gantries, eight CCTV cameras and 12 street lights.

It also employed its own high-performance, durable materials, including Axoshield and Axoaltoflex, as well as recycling planings from works to the access roads. No general waste went to landfill and, despite inclement weather all works for the second phase were completed on time.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Smombies! Look out!
    February 12, 2021
    Our city streets are being invaded by smartphone zombies, but help is on the way
  • Traffic control solution manufacturers win key project works
    September 26, 2013
    Traffic control system manufacturers have recently supplied some of their cutting-edge technology to major projects in Europe. Meanwhile, in southern Asia, another leading firm in the sector is helping reduce chronic traffic congestion in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. Guy Woodford reports Solutions supplied by Siemens Mobility & Logistics (M&L) are helping the Rijkswaterstaat improve traffic conditions at the Coentunnel in Amsterdam, one of the most heavily used traffic arteries in the Netherlands, used
  • FOSA win for Fotech
    May 17, 2022
    Fibre-optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology from Fotech has proven itself in a UK roadside air quality project, winning an international award along the way.
  • AD Engineering’s VMS for the Gateway WA project in Perth, Australia
    September 16, 2015
    Contractors are now installing variable message signs from Australian manufacturer A.D. Engineering International along parts of the Gateway WA Perth Airport and Freight Access project in Western Australia state. Fifteen more of the signs will be installed before the end of the year and will display two-colour text and four-colour pictures as required. Gateway WA is the largest infrastructure project ever undertaken by the client, the government agency Main Roads WA.