Skip to main content

GPS-guided gritters deployed in central London

Westminster City Council, in the heart of London, has invested around US$800,000 in new GPS-guided gritting trucks for winter road maintenance.
March 14, 2012 Read time: 1 min
Westminster City Council, in the heart of London, has invested around US$800,000 in new GPS-guided gritting trucks for winter road maintenance.

The new machines – six 18 tonne payload and two 10 tonne payload gritters - will be controlled from a central command centre as they operate throughout some 1,000 kms of road and pavement in Westminster borough.

Each truck will be tracked by the on-board GPS unit, while sensors will indicate whether or not each vehicle is spreading salt or just travelling. An on-board satellite navigation unit allows drivers to be given visible instructions of where to go and the best route to get there, delivering greater round efficiency and ensuring salt is spread where it is most needed.

Related Content

  • UK university project paves the way for smarter cities and autonomous cars
    February 1, 2016
    The new i-Motors project, led by academics from the University of Nottingham’s Geospatial Institute and Human Factors Research Group and digital technology company Control F1, aims to build a mobile platform that allows vehicles of different manufacturers and origins to transfer and store data. The project, which has received a US$1.9 million award from the UK’s innovation agency Innovate UK sets out to establish a set of universal standards on how vehicles communicate with each other, and with other ma
  • The great pay divide
    April 2, 2014
    Public acceptance is crucial for the acceptance of managed and express lanes as Jon Masters discovers. Lists of proposed highway expansion projects introducing variably priced toll lanes continue to lengthen. Managed lanes, or express lanes to some, are gaining support as a politically favourable way of adding capacity and reducing acute congestion on principal highways. In Florida, for example, the managed lanes on the 95 Express are claimed to have significantly increased average peak-time speeds on tolle
  • UK's Hindhead tunnel pushes the boundaries of traffic management
    January 23, 2012
    The new Hindhead Tunnel is the first in the UK to use radar-based incident detection. Paul Arnold, project manager with the Highways Agency, talks about the project. The comparatively remote location of the A3 Hindhead Tunnel has resulted in it becoming one of the most sophisticated in the UK in terms of monitoring and control systems, according to Paul Arnold, project manager for the Highways Agency (HA), which manages strategic roads in England and Wales. It is the first tunnel in the UK to use radar for
  • San Francisco Bay Area transit systems extend Cubic operations contract
    August 1, 2017
    Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) has been awarded a contract extension of up to five years from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for operations and maintenance services supporting the regional Clipper card fare payment system in the San Francisco Bay Area. The extended contract period is from November 2019 to November 2024 and is valued at approximately US$25 million per year. MTC is the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.