Traffic management centre keeping 24-hour watch and control of movement on Adelaide metro area's roads

Adelaide Metropolitan Traffic Management Centre at Norwood operates 24 hours of every day.
Image courtesy South Australian department of transport, planning and infrastructure

Every moment of Adelaide car traffic in the 21st Century was being watched and controlled from a high-tech centre in suburban Norwood.

The Adelaide Metropolitan Traffic Management Centre operated 24 hours of every day, controlling more than 700 sets of traffic signals across the state.

It used the Sydney Co-ordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) that decided the timing of signals according to demand. SCATS traffic signal software operated in more than 100 cities around the world, notably Singapore, Dublin, Shanghai and Mexico City.

The traffic management centre at Norwood had 315 cameras, including 130 in the metropolitan area them relaying images of the traffic flow.

The centre’s monitoring was boosted by a network of Bluetooth receivers that tracked Adelaide traffic in real time. The receivers picked up Bluetooth signals from devices on-board passing vehicles, such as stereos and mobiles phones, allowing the traffic management centre to monitor and display travel times.

The Bluetooth data allowed the centre to change traffic signals immediately in response to incidents and could be used to predict travel times between destinations.

Travel times were broadcast on more than 47 electronic signs around metropolitan Adelaide to give motorists a choice of routes.

Both the Bluetooth network and the world-first AddInsight app were developed in-house by the state government department for planning, transport and infrastructure at a low cost and with a view to exporting them to the world.