Average speed cameras installed on port road

Jenoptik sets up 16 police-enforced camera London Gateway

An average speed camera enforcement scheme has been installed at the DP World logistics park in the London Gateway port in Essex.

This is the first time an average speed scheme has been installed on private roads. Offences will be enforced by Essex Police as they would on any other road. Under the Road Traffic Act 1984, the private network is still subject to traffic laws because the roads are accessible to the public.

The owners of the site turned to camera enforcement specialist Jenoptik to deliver the safety solution after a number of incidents on its roads due to speeding. Problems included members of the public using the roads as a racetrack and staff at businesses based there not adhering to the limits.

Sixteen Jenoptik SPECS3 VECTOR cameras have been installed to cover three main routes across the site: the 40 mph Port Access Road, and the 30mph Ocean Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue routes within the logistics park.

The enforced limits have been applied with Traffic Regulation Orders and signing checked to ensure they are legally enforceable. Penalties will be the same as for any other police-enforced road.

The cameras have been fitted to the existing street lighting columns, which means costs have been minimised.

Jenoptik’s SPECS3 technology uses a automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras to monitor the number plates of vehicles as they pass fixed points on the road, then calculates the time taken compared with how long it should take if the vehicle was driving at the speed limit. Vehicles taking less time can therefore be shown to be going too fast. Independent analysis comparing accident data before and after installation of the technology on roads proves that fatal and serious collisions are reduced by 50%.

Jenoptik account manager

Timo Thornton said: “DP World contacted Jenoptik UK because we are the experts when it comes to average speed enforcement. This is our core business with more than 250 permanent average speed installations in the UK alone. Working collaboratively with DP World on the design and implementation of this scheme meant that we were able to move from order to completion in less than 12 weeks.”

Plymouth adopts camera enforcement for 20mph zone

Plymouth City Council is piloting a change in the thinking behind getting people to stick to 20 mile per hour speed limits as it turns from engineering solutions to the use of enforcement technology.

Traditional thinking among traffic engineers and the police is that 20 mph limit roads should be managed using interventions such as speed humps and traffic islands, but a network of streets in Plymouth is now being managed using a series of average and spot speed camera enforcement.

The roads had the speed limit enforced to crack down on so-called ‘boy racers’ antisocially driving at speed in cars with loud exhausts in narrow roads in a residential area of the city. Residents did not want speed humps on their narrow streets so the camera solution was therefore chosen instead.

The project was turned around in just four weeks after an initial meeting between the road safety partnership Vision Zero South West and speed camera solutions provider