Highways England (HE) has awarded a 10m (US$11.7m) contract to the Spanish transport technology and systems integrator Indra to implement a cloud-based management and control system for the 13 tunnels across the agency’s Strategic Road Network (SRN).
Indra was awarded the HE contract after competing against up to 35 international companies on the Crown Commercial Service Traffic Management Technology 2 (TMT2) procurement framework, many of them with previous work experience with the client. Indra has been able to demonstrate its recent and successful work with Transport for London (TfL) for a complex project that included the deployment of a centralized management system for the city’s 12 road tunnels and 56 miles (90km) of connecting roads. The new HE contract will launch Indra’s relationship with England’s road traffic authority, and position it as the leading tunnel management technology supplier in the UK.
The contract will see Indra working in partnership with HE to re-platform the agency’s existing tunnel control systems onto the new Tunnel Management Control System (TCMS), which will give HE greater operational flexibility, due to the deployment of Indra’s proprietary Horus platform in the cloud. Currently, all of HE’s tunnels are individually controlled using local systems installed in each tunnel, so the Indra system will offer significant improvements in operational efficiency, by offering an integrated vision and centralized information for real-time decision making.
Indra will equip the agency’s tunnel estate with its Horus smart management platform, currently considered one of the world’s state-of-the-art tunnel control systems, which will be deployed as a cloud-based service, allowing the control of HE’s infrastructure from any traffic management center (TMC).
Horus enables the integrated management of the tunnel’s different Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) and safety systems, allowing for automated incident management. It offers operators real-time information and a unique perspective of everything that occurs in the tunnel, enabling decision making and operational efficiency, in routine and emergency situations alike. It also contributes to reducing the risk of incidents and speeds up management, optimizes resource management, and offers drivers greater safety and service quality.
Another advantage of the Indra platform is that it permits the integration of multiple tunnels for centralized management using a single interface. Specifically, Horus’s scalability, which allows for expanding its scope to manage other tunnels, uses open standards to guarantee compatibility with future developments, and its capability for integrating with England’s overall traffic management system, have been key aspects in the award.
