Today, the WiE&IT Team took almost 30 UTS students on a site visit to the Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) Transport Management Centre for NSW. The Transport Management Centre is situated in Redfern, and is the centre for traffic control for all state roads in the whole of NSW- that's 18,000km of road! We were invited into their presentation room, the very same room where they greet politicians and international partners, which had a great view over the Transport Operations Room. Having never heard of the TMC before, I was truly amazed to see the huge screen occupying an entire wall and displaying many familiar roads. Angela Cannuli, our presenter for the day, explained that the Operations controllers work in shifts to monitor these roads 24/7, every day of the year, and to send assistance where it's needed.
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| Operations Controllers monitoring traffic in Sydney city |
Angela showed a short video which explained the operations of the TMC in more detail. The Operations Controllers role is 'incident management', which involves liaising with emergency services, coordinating field resources, monitoring traffic, planning major events to minimise impact on non event communities (such as City2Surf), communicating with customers including using various social media and last but not least, road works (of course). Angela also described some of the innovations in traffic control management that have been implemented throughout Sydney over the years. One of these innovations includes the SCATS system. SCATS stands for Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System, and is used to control traffic flow. Before SCATS was used, traffic lights were on a time based cycle, and would change periodically despite traffic flow. Now, when a car pulls up at an intersection, weights under the road detect there is a demand for the lights to change. This makes it much easier to reduce congestion in busy intersections. This system was developed in Australia, but is operational in 27 countries and 263 cities around the world.
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| Angela showing us the SCATS system in action |
Other innovations include the electronic lane changing system used on the Harbour Bridge, as well as the Live Traffic NSW website. Fiona Simmonds, who works on the Live Traffic NSW website, gave a short talk about the mobile applications that are now available for Android and iPone (which I immediately downloaded!).
RMS are always looking for graduates. Anyone interested in working at RMS should apply through their website, found here:
http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/careers/index.htmlKeep an eye on our Facebook for more upcoming events and site visits!
http://www.facebook.com/groups/UTSwieandit/
