Skip to main content

Simulation Systems wins England traffic signal management upgrade

Highways England has awarded a contract to deliver a central traffic signal control and management system for south-east England to Simulation Systems Limited (SSL) Central to the contract, for England’s motorway and major A-roads, will be a Siemens Stratos system which is designed to be the UK’s first cloud-hosted, fully integrated traffic control and management solution. The project will also include Hosted-SCOOT, a real time UTC and adaptive traffic control system. It is already used to manage and
June 21, 2016 Read time: 3 mins
A single hosted solution for south-east England
Highways England has awarded a contract to deliver a central traffic signal control and management system for south-east England to Simulation Systems Limited (SSL)

Central to the contract, for England’s motorway and major A-roads, will be a 1134 Siemens Stratos system which is designed to be the UK’s first cloud-hosted, fully integrated traffic control and management solution.

The project will also include Hosted-SCOOT, a real time UTC and adaptive traffic control system. It is already used to manage and co-ordinate traffic control for 76 UK authorities, including the control of many 8100 Highways England junctions.

The Siemens Stratos system will replace the existing UTC control system for London’s orbital motorway, the M25. It will bring the control of sites in central southern England and the south-east under the control of the new system. There will be expansion capacity for other regional areas.

Gary Cox, product sales manager for Simulation Systems urban systems area, said the functionality offered by PC SCOOT has been migrated into Stratos to offer the module known as Hosted-SCOOT. “This allows UTC and SCOOT-controlled junctions to be quickly migrated to Stratos control where the sites already have UG405 outstations and IP communications in place,” he said.

SSL, based near Bristol in south-west England, has already started delivery of a traffic signals module to Highways England. When linked to the latest generation of IP outstations, it will offer on a single platform the functionality of two previously offered but separate systems.

This provides Highways England with a single hosted solution for both real-time control and monitoring. The hosted system will be accessed through secure internet-based connections providing the flexibility to operate the system from many locations by many operators.

SSL said that older sites can be easily upgraded by means of installing new UG405-compliant outstations and moving to IP communications. This can be done by either upgrading the existing analogue leased line to broadband or by providing easily deployed 3G technology.

A planned move to IP communications as part of this project implementation will allow Highways England to avoid any potential interruptions to future control as a result of withdrawing any analogue communication lines over the next few years. SSL said that Highways England has already made significant progress on this, noted SSL managing director Louis Thompson.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • AECOM secures five contract wins with Highways England
    January 30, 2017
    Global infrastructure services firm AECOM has secured five contracts with Highways England to deliver highway design services across five separate schemes. The contracts, with a combined worth more of than €29 million to AECOM, are part of Highways England’s Roads Investment Strategy announced in 2014 for maintenance, improvements and upgrades to motorways and major A-class roads. AECOM will delivery of multidisciplinary services for the A38 Derby Junctions scheme in northern England. AECOM has als
  • Fluor wins award from Highways England
    November 5, 2015
    Fluor Corporation has won an achievement award from Highways England for its National Roads Telecommunications Services (NRTS) project. This has been recognised by Highways England for achieving 3 million safe working hours while executing the project across England’s operational motorways and trunk roads. The Significant Achievement Award for Safety was presented by David Brewer, Highways England’s network delivery and development executive director to Kevin Hamer, Highways England NRTS contract manage
  • Ferrovial 5G for Silvertown sites in London
    October 18, 2021
    The 5G network has been deployed in partnership with Nokia and Telent for work on the tunnel that will connect London’s Greenwich Peninsula and Silvertown district.
  • Extended Traffic Control in 2014 and beyond
    April 3, 2014
    One leading traffic control solution company has announced a major acquisition to broaden its customer offer, while the delivery of an ambitious real-time journey information service for Scotland’s motorists is well on track. Guy Woodford reports Kapsch’s TrafficCom says its high-profile recent US$16 million acquisition of Transdyn will enable it to offer current and future customers worldwide an extended end-to-end product and solution portfolio for intelligent transport systems (ITS). The acquisitio