A congestion reduction and road safety scheme at a Scottish roundabout has now won six major UK transport industry awards, following the news that it has been presented with two more trophies by ITS (UK).
ITS (UK) has presented the Sheriffhall Roundabout: Mitigating Lane Transgression with the Intelligent Road Stud project with its Forward Thinking Award as well as the UK Scheme of the Year Award.
This success follows earlier recognition from four other major industry awards over the past year, and is a confirmation of the effectiveness of innovative thinking to address a very common problem. Sheriffhall is a first-of-its-kind approach to reducing lane transgression on a multilane spiral roundabout. Connecting several key roads around Edinburgh and handling upward of 42,000 vehicles a day, the A720 Sheriffhall Roundabout has the potential to become very congested at peak times, so any incidents can bring about major disruption.
Clearview Intelligence, working alongside BEAR Scotland and Amey on behalf of Transport Scotland, installed an innovative intelligent road stud solution on the roundabout. The deployment uses Clearview’s IRS2 Hardwired Intelligent Road Studs triggered by green phases of traffic signals on the roundabout. With the system in place, as soon as the traffic signal on the entrance to the roundabout turns green, studs embedded in the road surface immediately illuminate and guide drivers onto the appropriate lanes of the roundabout. As the traffic signal turns red, all studs on that section switch off and studs at the next section illuminate as the corresponding traffic signal turns green.
Independent evaluation by researchers from the Transport Research Institute at Edinburgh Napier University conducted a full ‘before and after’ study on driver behavior at the roundabout with over 55,000 individual vehicle movements being analyzed. The research found a reduction in lane transgression activity across nearly all vehicle types and maneuvers, even during daylight hours, with a significant reduction in transgression rate (>50%) for medium-sized vehicles. Overall, the study has concluded that the intelligent road stud scheme has significant positive impact on collision risk at the roundabout through reduced lane transgressions, meaning less congestion and fewer accidents.
The full list of 2016/17 awards for the Sheriffhall project are:
ITS (UK) Scheme of the Year Award;
ITS (UK) Forward Thinking Award;
National Transport Awards – Most Innovative Transport Project;
Highways Magazine Excellence Awards – Road Marking Project of the Year;
Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation – John Smart Road Safety Award;
Scottish Transport Awards – Excellence in Technology and Innovation Award.
“Working in very close and integrated partnerships with our clients is a core aspect of how we run our business,” commented Nick Lanigan, Clearview’s managing director. “I’m very proud of how the whole project developed and the way all the stakeholders approached working together in an open and collaborative manner. And just look at the result! The Sheriffhall scheme may be the celebrated example of this way of working, but it’s certainly not the only one we can legitimately point to as a normal working approach for us.”
