Vehicle to improve safety and reduce disruption on motorways

A new maintenance assistance vehicle (MAV) developed by Highways England and Mott MacDonald to help replace overhead signs was inspired by an aircraft catering vehicle and is set to reduce the duration of roadworks.
September 16, 2016 Read time: 1 min

A new maintenance assistance vehicle (MAV) developed by 8101 Highways England and 1869 Mott MacDonald to help replace overhead signs was inspired by an aircraft catering vehicle and is set to reduce the duration of roadworks.

Traditionally, signs are mounted and removed using a flat-bed truck, crane and access platform – a process that can take up to 40 minutes. However with the MAV’s hydraulically elevating body, this can be achieved in around 20 to 25 minutes by using a small jib crane which is mounted on the vehicle itself.

Once elevated to the correct height, the jib crane lifts the detached sign off the gantry and the operatives use a trolley to move it into the truck’s main body. This procedure is reversed when installing a new signs.

The hydraulically powered scissor lift enables the signs at heights of up to 8.5m to be serviced in wind speeds of up to 47mph, while its CCTV cameras enable the driver to correctly position the vehicle below the gantry before maintenance and monitor the operatives while they work.

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Hartford’s tailors winter maintenance on Esri’s GIS platform
    August 5, 2016
    The in-house winter maintenance and vehicle tracking system built by the Public Works Department in Hartford, Connecticut, coped with record snowfalls and cut costs too. When it comes to dealing with the effects of mother nature, transport agencies can find themselves in a lose-lose situation: criticised if the roads or rail lines are disrupted by snow, ice or floods for more than a few hours and lambasted for wasting money if the equipment and stockpiles put in place for a hard winter remain unused.
    Read More
  • Jaguar Land Rover to begin real-world tests of CAV technologies
    July 18, 2016
    Jaguar Land Rover plans to create a fleet of more than 100 research vehicles over the next four years, to develop and test a wide range of connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) technologies. The first of these research cars will be driven on a new 41 mile test route on UK motorways and urban roads around Coventry and Solihull later this year. The initial tests will involve vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications technologies that will allow cars to talk to each other and roadsid
    Read More
  • VanJee Lidar aims to improve truck safety
    September 21, 2022
    Chinese company VanJee is showing off its high-quality Lidar WLR-711 sensor specifically designed for vehicle classification, traffic data collection and vehicle dimension measurement. This data is crucial for automatic tolling, safety and compliance and infrastructure planning.
    Read More
  • Scotland introduces first ITS system
    December 5, 2012
    A new intelligent transport system (ITS) has been launched as part of the Forth Replacement Crossing in Fife, Scotland, to ease congestion on the M90. The motorway management system will create a dedicated bus lane as well as carriageway variable speed limits which will be used during periods of congestion to help smooth traffic flow, reduce congestion and help make journey times more reliable. The system features seventeen new motorway overhead gantries linked to traffic sensors embedded in the carriageway
    Read More

Highlighted Content