Secrets from county hall’s traffic control room

The Integrated Traffic Control Centre (ITCC) is based at the county council’s HQ in Hertford, and its 229 cameras monitor more than 3,000 miles of the county’s roads – which is the second busiest network in the country after the capital.

The ITCC opened in October 2012 when Ringway took over the county’s highways services contract, and traffic and travel updates are communicated to the public from 7am-7pm Monday to Friday.

Terry Douris, Herts County Council’s cabinet member for transport, said: “The 
latest technology used in the Integrated Transport Control Centre plays a really 
important role in helping us manage traffic on Hertfordshire’s busy roads.

“Ultimately, our main objective is to keep the road network moving as much as possible. In an emergency, using the cameras in the control centre means we can prioritise those areas most in need.

“It’s all part of our commitment to keeping Hertfordshire moving and connected with an efficient and reliable transport network.”

Each year, the centre coordinates more than 55,000 reactive road maintenance 
repair jobs (over 1,000 a week), with over 25,000 of those requiring an emergency 
maintenance response – 8,000 within one or two hours and 17,000 within 24 hours.

Emergency maintenance jobs can include anything fromremoving debris or spillages, managing drainage issues, mending damaged signs, bollards and bridges to fixing faulty traffic lights.

Hertfordshire is the only county to be dissected by four motorways (the M25, M1, A1(M), M11) and it has three major airports on its borders – Luton, Heathrow and Stansted.

Using cameras allows the team to check key journey times, and they can even change traffic light timings if necessary to ease congestion in a particular area.

Visit www.roadworks.org to find out what roadworks are taking place in your area and see what’s coming up in the future.

For live updates, follow @Herts_Highways on Twitter.