As traffic volumes continue to increase, the traditional option has been to build new roads or extra lanes. Sometimes, this is the right solution but cost or planning restrictions often make this approach unfeasible. Operators want to reduce running costs whilst maximising capacity. An increasingly favoured option is to optimise the use of existing road infrastructure by making them “smarter”.

Smarter roads require a real-time understanding of what is happening on the road-network, which necessitates the use of novel sensor technologies. Navtech Radar has been developing and implementing sensor technology and analytics for optimising the throughput on our surface roads, tunnels and bridges. The sophisticated software allows for individual rule setting and, according to the company, the Clearway solution has the lowest false alarm rate in comparison to any other technology available in the market today.

Ryan Hood, Sales & Marketing Director of Navtech Radar, explains, “Our radar-based AID solution has now been adopted as a de facto standard in many countries. Several of the AID projects on which our technology is implemented include all-lane running schemes on strategic roads with no hard shoulder, so fast, reliable and accurate detection is a must. Increasingly, we also see more and more requests to use the radar data for secondary benefits, such as traffic data and driver behaviour monitoring. For AID, Clearway gives very low numbers of false alarms – typically one per 1 km per 24 hours – and is widely used in geographical regions where inclement weather, such as rain, fog, snow, sand and dust, is common. There simply is no other technology that would be effective for this kind of application.”

Some of the most recent projects completed using Navtech’s Clearway AID solution includes several stretches on strategic roads in the UK and Sweden, Mastrafjord and Byfjord subsea tunnels in Norway, and Bolte Bridge in Melbourne, Australia.