UK’s Saltash Tunnel gets hi-tech safety upgrade

The UK's Saltash Tunnel is undergoing a major US$1.53 million upgrade to the incident detection system to provide quicker detection of vehicle fires and other incidents. The scheme will see close to 5,000m of cable installed inside the 410m tunnel on the A38 in the county of Cornwall in England. Overall design of the new system and integrated control systems are from PDS – Paul Ducker Systems – and includes smoke detectors from UK firm SICK Sensor Intelligence and SmartVision fiber-optic temperature sensi
June 4, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
More than US$1.5 million of new safety equipment is being installed in the Saltash Tunnel in England
The UK's Saltash Tunnel is undergoing a major US$1.53 million upgrade to the incident detection system to provide quicker detection of vehicle fires and other incidents.


The scheme will see close to 5,000m of cable installed inside the 410m tunnel on the A38 in the county of Cornwall in England.

Overall design of the new system and integrated control systems are from PDS – Paul Ducker Systems – and includes smoke detectors from UK firm 3316 SICK Sensor Intelligence and SmartVision fiber-optic temperature sensing systems from AP Sensing in Germany. Way-finding signs are from Roomfoss.

All the systems will be aligned to the public address system – installed along with a new CCTV system two years ago - to direct drivers to the safest tunnel exit in the event of an incident, according to 8100 Highways England.

The tunnel, which opened in 1988, has a speed limit of 50kph and a reversible central lane to cope with holiday and rush hour traffic. Each day, more than 38,000 motorists use the tunnel  that was designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson, built by 1146 Balfour Beatty and has a design life of at least 100 years.

Highways England said it will hold joint emergency test exercises with the fire services and police when work is finished sometime this spring.

Highway & Network Management

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Upgrade work starts on junction of London’s orbital motorway M25
    February 20, 2015
    Work has started on a €136 million road improvement project on the UK’s London ring road, the M25 motorway. Crews from Balfour Beatty and Skanska have moved onto the interchange between the A13 national road and the M25 at junction 30 near Thurrock in the county Essex. The A13 on approach to the junction will be widened to four lanes in each direction and the junction itself will have dedicated link roads between the M25 and the A13. “Traffic at the junction is expected to grow by up to a quarter b
    Read More
  • New Zealand’s Waterview project is moving closer to completion
    December 13, 2016
    New Zealand’s biggest road project is less than a year away from completion, and a lot of progress has been made since World Highways last looked at the project two years ago - Mary Searle Bell reports New Zealand’s Waterview project is moving closer to completion and will be the largest road project in the country. The NZ$2 billion Western Ring Route will see the creation of an alternative motorway to State Highway 1, which runs through the centre of Auckland. The 47km-long motorway will allow a large p
    Read More
  • Amey secures ITS deal with Transport Scotland
    January 3, 2022
    Amey will operate and maintain variable messaging signs, CCTV, emergency roadside telephones and various power and communication cabinets.
    Read More
  • Tunnel vision with TrafiBot Dual AI camera
    September 24, 2024
    Flir’s TrafiBot Dual AI offers a fast thermal core, the most reliable 14-bit early fire detection for road tunnels and robust artificial intelligence for the highest detection performance.
    Read More

Highlighted Content