Siemens ITS awarded new Coventry traffic signal refurbishment contract

Siemens ITS, the company’s UK division, has been awarded a new contract by Coventry City Council to design and refurbish traffic signal equipment and systems at nine signalized junctions in the city.

Following the recent completion of the design stages by Siemens, work is now underway to supply and replace equipment including new poles, controllers and signal heads, and upgrade sites to MOVA (Microprocessor Optimized Vehicle Actuation) and SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimization Technique) control to ensure optimum Urban Traffic Control (UTC) operation.

Using funding from the National Productivity Investment Fund, Coventry City Council is renewing life-expired traffic control equipment with the latest designs and management systems to improve network performance and reliability, and reduce maintenance costs. Most of the refurbished sites are signalized junctions located on the busy A45, with other sites on Tile Hill Lane, Vanguard Avenue, Herald Avenue and The Butts. 

Completion of the works later in October will see all sites move to the Siemens UTC system, which will enable Coventry to migrate to intelligent network management with the deployment of Siemens Stratos, the company’s cloud-based strategic traffic management system. Using industry-standard Urban Traffic Management and Control (UTMC) interfacing, the Stratos platform will provide the City Council with effective network management using visual ‘drag-and-drop’ methodology. Strategies can be created quickly and effectively to manage the most complex conditions with minimal effort, and it will be possible to completely automate routine network management.

The new enhanced version of the Siemens SLD4 loop detectors being used on this scheme feature sophisticated length-based classification for buses, with configurable outputs to extend the green time, allowing public transport to continue rather than being held up at the signals. The enhanced SLD4 delivers self-tuning and fully automatic set-up features, ensuring optimum and reliable performance without interference, and can also be powered from either AC or DC supplies.

“I’m delighted that we are upgrading some of our traffic lights on one of our busiest routes,” commented Jayne Innes, cabinet member for Coventry city services. “It’s important that we use the latest technology to keep our city moving, and although there will be some short term disruption, it will be well worth it in the long term. I thank drivers for their patience while we get this work done.”