Case Studies

A14 – Cambridge to Huntingdon

Keeping road users well informed during road works poses a challenge for any Highways management operation, and as the expectations of road users grow it’s important to look for new ways to enhance road user experience. Therefore, project managers on the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme needed to find an effective way of minimising the impact of the road works for road users, while maximising the information provided to drivers.

Keeping road users happy during road works is by no means an easy feat.

The A14 scheme is such a large scale, high profile project, that project managers were determined to promote the best possible road user experience. But how?

The Solution

Working closely with the A14 Integrated Delivery Team (IDT), MVIS deployed the first ITS solution that allowed real-time journey information from the National Traffic Operations Centre (NTOC) to be easily and accurately displayed to road users, on a portable VMS.

Twenty-two VMS-Cs and fourteen VMS-As were deployed as part of the A14 project displaying journey times that inform road users of the predicted journey time from their current location to the end of the affected area of road. This offers road users the opportunity to select alternative routes, if possible.

As a result, the application of DATEX JTS onto the A14 upgrade scheme enables a daily average of 85,000 drivers to navigate the roadworks, which span 21-miles along the A14, easily and efficiently with minimal disruption.

The Benefits

The DATEX JTS from MVIS enables project managers to:

• Provide accurate, real-time journey information direct from the NTOC
• Automatically renew time messages every 5 minutes
• Keep road users well informed, offering exceptional customer service

IDT Project Director, Mark Krall said:

“Trustworthy and reliable, MVIS makes my job easy. The service it gives is exceptional and it means there is one less area for me to worry about”.