Skip to main content

Technology trial a first for roads scheme

A US$124.8 million (£88.4 million) project to upgrade access to one of the UK’s busiest ports is trialling the use of technology to improve the monitoring of highway equipment located along the road, such as street lighting and drainage, to aid future maintenance. Contractors working on the A160 Port of Immingham improvement scheme are using the RedBite asset tool, developed by a Cambridge-based company, to tag Highways England owned assets. RedBite is a spin-out from the University of Cambridge and a m
April 7, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
A US$124.8 million (£88.4 million) project to upgrade access to one of the UK’s busiest ports is trialling the use of technology to improve the monitoring of highway equipment located along the road, such as street lighting and drainage, to aid future maintenance.

Contractors working on the A160 Port of Immingham improvement scheme are using the RedBite asset tool, developed by a Cambridge-based company, to tag 8101 Highways England owned assets. RedBite is a spin-out from the University of Cambridge and a member of the HyperCat Consortium. The technology uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, Quick Response (QR) Codes and GPS tags.

Once the product is tagged, the data is securely transmitted to a webpage where all data relating to that piece of equipment or asset is recorded for future use.

This is said to be the first time the technology has been used on a road project.  Items which have been tagged so far along the A160 include lighting columns, signs, pavements, culverts and gullies.

The Port of Immingham is the UK’s largest port by tonnage and handles up to 55 million tonnes of goods every year, including nearly 20 million tonnes of oil and 10 million tonnes of coal.

The scheme will see a three-mile section of the A160 between the A180 and the Port of Immingham upgraded to a dual carriageway along its entire length.

Once completed, traffic congestion should be reduced, journey times become more reliable, and safety improved for road users and the local community. There will also be improved access to the Port of Immingham and the surrounding area.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Delhi-Mumbai national highway to go ETC
    February 21, 2014
    Drivers on the Delhi-Mumbai highway are to benefit from electronic toll collection (ETC) from August this year. According to the highways ministry, ETC using RFID tags will be implemented on toll plazas across the golden quadrilateral (GQ), a highway network connecting many of the major industrial, agricultural and cultural centres of India. There are about 80 toll plazas on the entire GQ. Toll plazas on east-west and north-south corridors would be brought under the scheme by October. To begin with,
  • Inrix aids authorities in dealing with data
    August 18, 2015
    New traffic data products and services have been launched to aid transport and urban planners and business with detailed intelligence on journey patterns, reports Jon Masters. Manual travel surveys ought soon to become a thing of the past for transport planners and the business community. The technology now exists for getting sophisticated levels of traffic and trip data from connected vehicles. Cars and commercial fleets carrying a GPS device, or a mobile phone or smartphone are the sources of the informat
  • Telstra and Cohda Wireless conduct first Australian V2P technology trial
    July 28, 2017
    Telstra, in partnership with Cohda Wireless, has successfully conducted Australia’s first test of vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) technology over a mobile network in South Australia. The trial demonstrated vehicles interacting directly with pedestrians’ and cyclists’ mobile phones providing early-warning collision detection and alerts via an application installed on the phones. The technology was tested using some common scenarios that occur every day in Australia, such as a car and a cyclist approaching a blin
  • EU support for transport links in Vienna, Sweden, Finland
    November 15, 2013
    The European Union will use over US$15 million from the Ten-T programme to co-finance two initiatives for the extension of Vienna’s tri-modal port container handling capacity and a project to upgrade the transport link between northern Sweden and western Finland. The project to extend Vienna’s tri-modal port will receive funds of over US$7 million and includes studies and works which will help eliminate major bottlenecks in the port's transfer and combination capacity. The studies will plan and design