Skip to main content

Smart road layout with Lindsay’s Road Zipper

Lindsay Transportation Solutions is focusing on its Road Zipper system for ITS applications. This moveable barrier system quickly reconfigures the road to mitigate congestion, while providing positive barrier protection between opposing lanes of traffic.
October 10, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Chris Sanders of Lindsay showcasing the Road Zipper system

7613 Lindsay Transportation Solutions is focusing on its Road Zipper system for ITS applications. This moveable barrier system quickly reconfigures the road to mitigate congestion, while providing positive barrier protection between opposing lanes of traffic. Road Zipper can be used to create flexible bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors that can be returned to traffic during non-commute periods to maximise the full use of the roadway. BRT corridors allow agencies to deliver fast, reliable, cost-effective transportation services to move people in, out, and around urban centres.

Automated decisions regarding when to change lane patterns can decrease congestion to a greater degree than reconfiguring the road based solely on a structured time schedule. Lindsay’s ITS partners collect cell phone and microwave radar data to analyse traffic patterns in real time.

Once this data is compared with historical patterns or sitespecific algorithms, the Road Zipper moveable barrier is used to make changes to the road configuration.

When considered in the planning stages of new road construction, Lindsay Transportation Solutions says the Road Zipper provides additional important options for future flexibility as the number of road users constantly increases.

This is because the greatest challenge in reconfiguring an existing roadway into a managed lanes facility is often the permanent centre median barrier. This inflexible divider bifurcates the roadway and narrows the possibilities into a “left side, right side” mentality. However, roads that are designed without any permanent concrete barriers are ultimately flexible and reconfigurable.

Moveable medians can adjust traffic flow quickly and safely, and the options increase exponentially with two or more moveable walls. Vehicles can be separated by direction, passenger count, vehicle type, speed, payment and even autonomous capability to move more people safely through a heavily travelled corridor.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • US state of the art workzone safety
    January 25, 2012
    The Texas Transportation Institute's Jerry Ullman talks about the state of the art in work zone safety in the US. Work zones are places where, perhaps more than anywhere else on the road network, mobility and safety are strongly linked. Historically, field crews and contractors wanted vehicles in work zones to be moving as slowly as possible, assuming that made conditions the safest for work crews. We are though starting to see a shift in such thinking with the realisation that excessive delays or slow-down
  • Why keeping count is so important for traffic management
    November 21, 2023
    Traffic engineers need to have multiple solutions in their toolbox to complete the most accurate and safe data collection programmes possible, explains Wes Guckert of The Traffic Group
  • Creative finance enables parking progress in LA
    March 15, 2016
    David Crawford investigates an innovative public/private partnership. Los Angeles entered the second decade of the 21st century facing major challenges to its parking operations. With a population of 3.8 million, and its car-oriented culture still predominant, the city's parking meters were technically outdated - with most only accepting coins and many regularly out of service - resulting in a substantial loss of revenue. This coincided with a number of Californian cities looking to parking income to boost
  • How can US transportation be ‘re-envisioned’?
    October 17, 2019
    In her address to this year’s ITS America Annual Meeting, congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, called for a ‘re-envisioning’ of transportation. Her speech is below – and ITS International asks a number of US experts what they would like to see ‘re-envisioned’…

    I would like to welcome  ITS America to the nation’s capital.