Government-owned company to deploy ground breaking technology on scheme on 14th November
National Highways is to deploy the innovative SwiftGate innovation on the A3 Hindhead Tunnel in Surrey.
The automatic gates mean workers do not have to put out a taper of cones from the back of a lorry to close off a lane. SwiftGate will do it for them in under three minutes – much faster than manually creating a taper which can take up to 25 minutes.
SwiftGate is a first-of-a-kind automatic taper system that enables simple and efficient traffic management, including road and lane closures.
A safe and efficient alternative to manually implemented lane closures, SwiftGate reduces risk by limiting the need for operatives to put lanes closures in place in dangerous locations.
Pivoting horizontally, SwiftGate provides increased visibility of lane closures thanks to reflective material and LED lighting. The innovative system’s unique arm design provides strength, flexibility and durability and, because SwiftGate is manufactured using corrosion-resistant materials, it can withstand harsh roadside conditions. The result is a robust and reliable solution, no matter what the weather conditions may be.
The innovation will be in action next week when it is used to close the tunnel overnight, on Tuesday 14 November, for routine maintenance work. National Highways worked in collaboration on this project with Kier Group Transportation and Highway Care Ltd to continue our commitment to innovation, keeping road users and road workers safer while they complete essential maintenance of the road network.
Ollie Pulling, Applications and Innovations Manager Highway Care, adds "We are pleased to be leveraging our focus on automation to reduce safety risk to road user and highways operatives with this SwiftGate project. Working in partnership with Versilis, learning from their success with this product internationally, we have made the necessary changes to bring it in line with our UK standards. This deployment takes us one step closer to a full 'boots off the ground' closure, a change that would truly transform the industry for the better."
A very interesting solution to this tough-safety-problem for TTM operatives, I bet the Safety Risk Assessment for that (installation of the system as well as its use c/w old-school TTM) was a worthy task. It doesn't show the deployment of the individual signs/beacons in live traffic; hopefully CCTV is used to check lane clear before deployment? it's analagous to hard shoulder closure on dynamic hard shoulder motorway links, but in this case with a deployment into live lanes having a different risk to users if not observed. What happens if a motorcyclist has to take avoiding action and enters the closed lane during the live-deployment phase; is it aborted to avoid a sign being lowered onto/into the immediate p…