The National Roads Telecommunications Services is the

fibre-optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

network of communication and control that

National Highways National Highways, formerly the Highways Agency and later Highways England, is a State-owned enterprise, government-owned company charged with operating, maintaining and improving Roads in England, motorways and major A roads in England. It al ...

uses to monitor England's roads. Its design has allowed

active traffic management Active traffic management (also managed lanes, smart lanes, managed/smart motorways) is a method of increasing peak capacity and smoothing traffic flows on busy major highways. Techniques include variable speed limits, hard-shoulder running and ...

, that has led to managed motorways.

History

Prior to 2005, the motorway network was controlled by the National Motorway Communication System (NMCS). This network was not inherently fibre-optic or digitally controlled. The £490 million contract for the NRTS was awarded to the GeneSYS Consortium on 19 September 2005. GENESYS Consortium is a group of companies led by Fluor (

Fluor Corporation Fluor Corporation is an American multinational engineering and construction firm headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is a holding company that provides services through its subsidiaries in the following areas: oil and gas, industrial and infrastru ...

) and is a

Public–private partnership A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a long-term arrangement between a government and private sector institutions.Hodge, G. A and Greve, C. (2007), Public–Private Partnerships: An International Performance Review, Public Administ ...

. The system is designed to allow a national scheme of

road pricing Road pricing (also road user charges) are direct charges levied for the use of roads, including road tolls, distance or time-based fees, congestion charges and charges designed to discourage the use of certain classes of vehicle, fuel sour ...

, possibly using

radio-frequency identification Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromag ...

tags.} The cost of the project was described by the Association of British Drivers as being "''an awful lot to spend just for signs saying that motorways are closed and that you should not drink and drive''."

Structure

The NRTS is an intelligent transportation system based at the Quinton Business Park at

Quinton, Birmingham Quinton, is a residential area and ward of Birmingham, England just under west of the city centre. Formerly part of Halesowen parish, Quinton became part of Birmingham in 1909. Quinton was a village and the surrounding area was farmland until ...

. Video images are sent over fibre-optic cables to form a

switched video Switched video or switched digital video (SDV), sometimes referred to as switched broadcast (SWB), is a telecommunications industry term for a network scheme for distributing digital video via a cable. Switched video sends the digital video more ...

network. The fibre-optic system was deployed with ''Guardian-Lite 3700'' controllers, which

uncompressed video Uncompressed video is digital video that either has never been compressed or was generated by decompressing previously compressed digital video. It is commonly used by video cameras, video monitors, video recording devices (including general-pur ...

signals and other data to be sent at the same time, made (and invented) by AMG Systems of

Biggleswade Biggleswade ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Central Bedfordshire in Bedfordshire, England. It lies on the River Ivel, 11 miles (18 km) south-east of Bedford. Its population was 16,551 in the 2011 United Kingdom census, and its es ...

. The system uses a dual fibre cable. The system is resilient because, using the IP protocol, it can re-route signals if cables are damaged provided that alternative routes remain available.

Companies

* Fluor * Peek Traffic *

Mott MacDonald The Mott MacDonald Group is a consultancy headquartered in the United Kingdom. It employs 16,000 staff in 150 countries. Mott MacDonald is one of the largest employee-owned companies in the world. It was established in 1989 by the merger of M ...

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...

- based the system on its 1692 Metrospan Edge CWDM (coarse

wavelength-division multiplexing In fiber-optic communications, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is a technology which multiplexes a number of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths (i.e., colors) of laser light. This techniq ...

) platform, with the 7750 Service Router, and OmniPCX enterpriseOmniPCX
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voice-over-IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

switch (made by the CSBU subsidiary). Alcatel-Lucent own Genesys Conferencing.

Function

It controls traffic on England's motorways and major A roads.

Customers of the NRTS

* Traffic police (

Road Policing Unit A roads policing unit (RPU), or a similarly named unit in some forces, is the specialist road traffic police unit of a Law enforcement in the United Kingdom, British police force. Responsibilities RPUs work with the National Police Chiefs' Counci ...

s) and their Police Control Offices * Traffic England - real-time website *

Traffic Radio Traffic Radio was a digital radio station based in England. It was a 24-hour rolling traffic and travel service for motorways and major roads in England, run for the Highways Agency by Global Traffic Network. Traffic Radio could be heard on ...

TrafficMaster Teletrac (branded as Teletrac Navman; formerly Trafficmaster) is a software as a service company headquartered in Southern California, with offices in the United Kingdom. It provides cloud-based GPS fleet tracking software, stolen vehicle tracki ...

References

{{reflist

External links

NRTS

Background

NRTS inputs

Peek Traffic

Video clips

IMTech

News items

Project cost in October 2008

''Computing'' April 2008
2005 establishments in the United Kingdom Telecommunications in the United Kingdom Intelligent transportation systems Road transport in England Department for Transport Public–private partnership projects in the United Kingdom Organisations based in Birmingham, West Midlands