Skip to main content

Telent keeps traffic moving in Kent

Five-year extension to UK council signal contract follows 99.9% fault correction rate
By Ben Spencer November 24, 2020 Read time: 2 mins
The teams operate in the Kent County Council Highways Depot to ensure communication is immediate (© Sue Martin | Dreamstime.com)

Telent has been awarded a five-year extension of its traffic signal maintenance contract with Kent County Council in the UK.

The company says its maintenance responsibilities now include variable message signs, vehicle actuated signs and speed indicator devices which help ensure roads are as safe as possible. 

The contract also includes the supply and installation of new sites and refurbishments. 

Nigel Weldon, business development director – highways at Telent, says having a dedicated team with local knowledge of the area has meant it has “continually hit the council’s key performance indicators at a rate of 100% and corrected 99.9% of traffic signal faults on time throughout the contract”.

The dedicated Telent team comprises 15 members of staff. Over the years, the two teams have co-located in the Kent County Council Highways Depot to enable immediate communication.

Telent can address urgent issues remotely if the team is unable to visit the live site, the company adds. 

Michael Payne, cabinet member for highways and transport at Kent County Council, says: “Our priority is to ensure that the county’s transport system operates at a level of safety and quality that our residents expect. This contract extension, partnering us for a further five years with Telent’s dedicated team, means we can continue doing so.”

The extension will run from April 2021 until March 2026 and follows on from the existing contract which started in April 2016.
 

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Costing transit is complicated case
    August 19, 2015
    David Crawford welcomes fresh thinking from Canada. Public transit improvements can bring society “significantly more value” than conventional transport models normally indicate, argues Canadian researcher Todd Litman. “Traditional evaluation practices originally developed to assess roadway improvements, and focus primarily on vehicle travel speeds and operating costs. “They do not generally quantify or monetise basic mobility benefits, vehicle ownership and parking cost savings, or efficient land developme
  • Global navigation reference point to test zero emission driverless vehicles
    December 4, 2014
    A successful consortium led by the UK’s Transport research Laboratory (TRL) has been selected by Innovate UK to deliver the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment), one of three projects awarded to test driverless vehicles in UK urban locations. The US$12.5 million project will see three trials of different types of zero emission automated vehicles within an innovative, technology-agnostic testing environment set in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The ‘prime meridian’ was establi
  • IRD complements WIM with tyre under-inflation detection
    May 8, 2015
    To complement its existing WIM offering, IRD has introduced a system to detect under-inflated and flat tyres at highway speeds. Tyre inflation pressure has both safety and economic impacts for road users and none more so than with commercial vehicles. An underinflated tyre has decreased directional control, increased risk of catastrophic failure, and negatively impacts tyre life and fuel economy. In June 2014 the USDOT published Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts 2012 in which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
  • Tachometer breaks cause nearly 1,700 road closures, says IAM
    December 11, 2015
    Tachometer breaks, the mandatory rest stops commercial operators must take when driving, were the cause of nearly 1,700 road closures in one year alone, according to newly released figures from IAM Drive & Survive. According to the Road Haulage Association, 85 per cent of everything sold in the UK is carried by truck at some stage of the supply chain, with this number set to increase as more retail purchases are made online in the run up to Christmas. The numbers come from a Freedom of Information re