Highways Agency (National): Drivers and taxpayers to benefit from award of Highways Agency National Traffic Information Service (NTIS) contract

Drivers and taxpayers are set to benefit after the Highways Agency today announced the award of a new seven-year contract to provide traffic information to the millions of people who use the strategic road network every day. 

The new contract, to provide the National Traffic Information Service, was awarded to Network Information Services Ltd (NIS), a joint venture between Mouchel and Thales UK. We are committing £57 million to this contract and the new service will start on 1 September 2011.

It will replace the traffic data processing and publication elements of the existing ten year National Traffic Control Centre contract with a more efficient one, providing better value for the taxpayer and continuing to provide up to the minute traffic information for people using motorways and major A roads in England.

Roads Minister Mike Penning said:

“I welcome the award of this new contract which will deliver considerable savings while still providing the information services for drivers using motorways and other major roads in England.

“The National Traffic Information Service is central to the Highways Agency’s role of managing traffic and making the most efficient use of the existing network. Timely and accurate traffic information helps both private and commercial road users to plan their journeys, avoiding delays and congestion that add to the cost of journeys.”

The new service will maintain the Highways Agency’s capability to:

• Collect data about traffic, planned events and current events.

• Process this data to give a real-time national view of traffic conditions on the motorway and trunk road network.

• Assess the impact of events and traffic flows so staff can make decisions on the best response.

• Put those responses into action, including dynamic signing of traffic diversions and dispatching Highways Agency traffic officers to deal with incidents.

• Publish traffic and event information through: 

• roadside electronic message signs
• the Highways Agency (and in future DirectGov) website, for the public
• our Atlas service, aimed at business, professional and media users
• web services that are used to provide live content for hundreds of local media websites and are easily adaptable for use in social media
• mobile devices such as smart phones
• industry-standard data feeds that can be easily re-used, for example traffic information on Google maps.

• Provide real-time traffic information to the travel news media for broadcasting on national and regional radio and television.

• Provide information for the Agency and others to assess the overall performance of the strategic road network.

Notes to editors

1. The Highways Agency is an executive agency of the Department for Transport. We manage, maintain and improve England’s motorways and other strategic roads on behalf of the Secretary of State.

2. Network Information Services Ltd (NIS) is a 50/50 joint venture between consulting and business services group Mouchel and Thales UK.
Press contacts:
Mouchel - Melanie Bright, Mob: 07792 6594088, Email: melanie.bright@mouchel.com, Web:www.mouchel.com
Thales UK - Kathryn Bell, Mob: 07813 903274, Email: kathryn.bell@thalesgroup.com, Web:www.thalesgroup.com/uk

3. Real-time traffic information for England’s motorways and other strategic roads is available:

- From the web at www.highways.gov.uk/traffic or www.highways.gov.uk/mobile if using a phone or mobile device. 
- By phone from the Highways Agency Information Line on 0300 123 5000 at any time. (Calls to 0300 numbers will cost no more than 5p per minute from a standard BT residential landline. Call charges from other landlines and mobile networks may vary, but will be no more than a standard geographic call and will be included in all inclusive minutes and discount schemes).
- Before using any mobile, find a safe place to park. Never stop on the hard shoulder of a motorway except in an emergency. Make sure it’s safe and legal before you call.
- From our Traffic Radio service, available on DAB digital radio and the internet atwww.trafficradio.org.uk To tune into the DAB service, simply press the "scan" button on your radio. The radio will tune into all available channels and you can select the new service by scrolling through the channels until you reach "Traffic Radio".
- From Twitter on one of eight separate feeds with live traffic information for each region. For the full index visit www.highways.gov.uk/twitter

4. Receive our national and regional press releases by RSS and get the latest headlines straight to your desktop the moment we publish them to our website. Choose to receive a national press feed or one of our regionalised feeds - go to www.highways.gov.uk/rssnews for more information.

Contacts

 NDS Enquiries 
Phone: For enquiries please contact the issuing dept 
ndsenquiries@coi.gsi.gov.uk