Q-Free has announced the launch of LaneAware Airports, a new web-based application adapted from their first-of-its-kind software, LaneAware Work Zones, which organises, manages, and automates lane closures.
The LaneAware solution minimises human error by identifying potential conflicts, detecting duplicate requests, and verifying lane closures against agency policies, business rules, and approval processes. Requests are submitted through an intuitive, web-based application, checked for conflicts, and evaluated against a set of customer-defined rules.
Submissions are either automatically approved or based on criteria or an existing conflict, sent to an agency-appointed team member for manual review and approval. Having a lane management system with a well-defined approval process also helps avoid last minute requests.
LaneAware eliminates the time and cost associated with manually tracking work events in offline spreadsheets. It also enables lane closure data to be shared with key stakeholders, the motoring public and the media, improving the agency’s reputation through reliability.
Now LaneAware has been tailored for use on roads around airports, where managers must typically coordinate lane closures, construction and maintenance crews manually while trying to ensure a pleasant traveler experience.
“We realised early on that our LaneAware Work Zones solution could make a massive impact on facilities and organisations with a lot of moving parts,” says Morten Andersson, senior executive vice president of traffic management for Q-Free. “Most lane closure activities at airports are handled by multiple departments, making it an extreme challenge to coordinate activities without negatively impacting operations or traffic at critical times.LaneAware Airports centralises and resolves these conflicts easily, providing a seamless experience for both travellers and workers.”
LaneAware Airports uses geospatial time-based, user-defined business rules to automate the lane closure process and dramatically reduces the workload for airport staff and contractors. Approved staff and contractors can reserve lanes to close within specific time frames before work begins, providing staff with advanced notice, curbing last-minute notifications, and notifying stakeholders if multiple contractors attempt to reserve conflicting lane closures.
Once a lane closure reservation is made, airport staff can program notification messages for travellers and integrate those with a city’s traffic management system and other applications using Q-Free’s flexible application programming interface (API). This added benefit provides the public, media, and airport-focused vendors with the latest closure information, allowing travellers and businesses to plan routes and schedules more efficiently, improving their overall experience in and around the airport.
“It’s a fantastic tool for airports because it gives management a birds-eye view of all scheduled activities,” says Andersson. “This helps them make informed, data-driven decisions so they can avoid peak travel times and not hinder travellers—who may already be under a tremendous amount of stress.”
