Kapsch TrafficCom offers an industry leading Bridge & Tunnel Solution. It provides mission-critical support for integrated bridge and tunnel management across safety management, and integrated SCADA capabilities.
Tunnels and bridges present unique management challenges for operators. To keep traffic flowing optimally, and to maximise safety for drivers, responses to traffic incidents must be fast and effective. In addition, inspections and maintenance must be carried out quickly and efficiently, whilst specific challenges – such as maintaining good air quality in tunnels – require sophisticated, 24x7 monitoring, with the ability to trigger appropriate actions in real-time.
Added to this complexity, bridge and tunnel operators typically depend on multiple systems, from radio communications systems and variable message signs that display temporary speed limits and other instructions to drivers, to ventilation management systems, and supervisory command and data acquisition systems (SCADA).
This patchwork of technologies is typically difficult to operate, manage, maintain, and support. The different systems often require separate training and often separate operations staff as there are multiple systems involved.
Such fragmented solutions can also be highly dangerous. If a significant accident occurs in a tunnel, for example, separate systems are often used to control ventilation and suppress the fire. This can lead to threatening delays and mistakes.
The modular design of the Kapsch solution enables required systems to be fully integrated for the first time.
Our solution collects real-time traffic data, allowing users to detect and respond to congestion, incidents, emergency situations, and other conditions. Emergency responses to life-threatening incidents can be activated and deployed automatically hazardous situations are detected inside tunnels and on bridges.
Using our TIMP (Tunnel Incident Management Page) feature, meanwhile, operators can take manual control of emergency situations and consistently manage crisis events in an easy, intuitive manner.
Our solution delivers a number of important benefits for authorities and agencies looking to optimise management efficiency and safety for bridge and tunnel operations:
This upgrade is a win-win for all drivers who use our crossings by cutting precious minutes from daily commutes, by reducing vehicle accidents in toll lanes, and by decreasing emissions from vehicles waiting in line to pay cash at toll booths.
Rick Cotton, Executive Director, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
To appreciate the benefit of our fully integrated solution, imagine a fire in a tunnel. Our solution can detect the fire through linear heat detection and/or video. It will then automatically respond by closing further access to the tunnel, turn on exit lighting and provide guidance through public address (PA) systems and in-tunnel signs. Fire suppression will be automatically started in the appropriate zones. At any point during the process tunnel operators can manually fine tune the response enabling them, for example, to manage smoke extraction.
We have unique experience of providing integrated bridges and tunnels traffic management solutions around the world.
This allows our integrated solution to benefit from engineered approaches that take the best of our wide customer bases to provide a configurable system for the unique infrastructure of each bridge or tunnel.
Our experience also plays a critical role in the design of our solutions. We fully appreciate, for example, that emergencies in some tunnels will require traffic to be managed directly out of the tunnel. In other situations, however, it will be essential to pressurize the exit passages such as stairwells whilst in other cases, tunnels may include ramps or secondary, tertiary tunnels which can then be managed to provide a safe exit.
Our solutions push the boundaries of what is possible not only in terms of managing the flow of traffic but also by changing the mobility behaviour of people who live and travel through cities.
By bringing together data from multiple traffic control systems and agencies, and by supporting real-time and predictive analysis based on artificial intelligence, the Kapsch urban traffic management provides unique benefits for city authorities, mobility agencies, and citizens.
For highway and city authorities around the world, our unique capability to deliver end-to-end Orchestrated Connected Corridors is the key to improving road safety and delivering advanced traffic management solutions.
Kapsch's traffic intelligence solution transforms the current reactive traffic operation into a proactive approach which minimizes congestion and mitigates the impact of unexpected incidents and planned events.
Kapsch TrafficCom supports many of the most advanced highway traffic management installations in the world. Our unique solutions feature intelligent tools which automate the decision making process enabling authorities to respond faster to incidents and to manage traffic more proactively.
Kapsch's Traffic Demand Management solutions empower cities and their citizens to make well-informed and more sustainable daily transport choices that are beneficial for individuals and the city as a whole.