Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling

For other uses of "MIDAS", see MIDAS (disambiguation).

Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling, usually abbreviated to MIDAS, is a distributed network of traffic sensors, mainly inductive loops, (trialling at the moment radar technology by Wavetronix) which are designed to alert the local RCC (Regional Control Centre) to traffic flow and average speeds and in ATM (Active Traffic Management) zones, set variable message signs, advisory speed limits along with mandatory speed limits in ATM sections with little human intervention. Companies such as RAC, TomTom and Google use this traffic flow data via halogens reporting systems.

It is installed on all sections of the United Kingdom's motorways, such as the congested western stretch of the M25 motorway and much of the M60 motorway around Manchester, the Birmingham box (M6, M5 and M42) and the system has successfully reduced accidents.[1] Additionally, the system is installed on parts of the non-motorway trunk road network including the A14.[2]

The system replaced the Automatic Incident Detection (AID) system which was trialled in 1989 on an 83 kilometres (52 mi) section of the M1 motorway.[1] MIDAS was first installed on the M25 in 1997, after this section already had the variable speed limit.

By March 2006, the Highways Agency aims to have MIDAS installed on more than 910 kilometres (565 mi) of the English motorway network.

See also

External links

References

  1. 1 2 "Cost effectiveness of MIDAS". Highways Agency. Retrieved 2007-01-07.
  2. ↑ "A14 Corridor Traffic Management Scheme". Highways Agency. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, June 23, 2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.