A new vehicle tracking and navigation system has helped effective deployment of traffic officers in South Wales.

 Managed by South Wales Trunk Road Agency (SWTRA) on behalf of the Welsh Assembly, a trial of civilian traffic officers began in February, using a system from Masternaut Three X.

 With the powers to stop traffic and close roads, direct and divert traffic, place traffic signs and remove abandoned or broken down vehicles, traffic officers play an essential road safety role.

A fleet of specialist traffic officer vehicles are monitored using the web-based system.

The system constantly feeds back live data, displaying vehicle locations on a large panoramic screen in the control room of the South Wales traffic management centre, giving a bird’s eye view of operations.

On notification of an incident, the SWTRA control room team can quickly locate the nearest traffic officer on screen to dispatch to the scene.

The system tracks vehicle location, movements and whether the engine is idling or switched off.

 “Traffic officers respond to incidents in their patrol routes with the aim of cutting response times and reducing the impact of congestion,” said Rhodi Paul, network resilience engineer, South Wales Trunk Road Agency.

 “They are required to make the area safe before assessing any secondary response requirements and briefing the emergency services where necessary.

"It is beneficial for the control room to have a ‘bigger picture’ of activities on the network to enable an effective response.

“With Masternaut we have the advantage of a real-time view and can identify traffic officer resource in order provide further assistance.

“If a traffic officer is busy and another incident occurs within their patrol area, the system allows us to locate the nearest available officer to deal with the incident.”

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