Hi tech traffic systems and vigilant staff keep the wheels turning
Auckland’s Joint Transport Operations Centre (JTOC) plays a pivotal role in the management of Auckland city’s traffic. One of three centres in the country with this important task, it is the eyes and ears of the urban and highway ‘One Network’, monitoring a national total of 10,894 km of state highways, as well as Auckland City’s roads.
Once housed in the former Auckland Harbour Bridge administration building, JTOC is now housed up the road in a new, larger and much more hi tech centre at Smales Farm, where more than 450 CCTV cameras relay live pictures of the network to the operations room, and sensors collect data on vehicles passing through hundreds of metering points.
From here traffic signals throughout the city are monitored and controlled to optimise traffic flows for different times of the day.
From here too, the minor to major incidents that occur as ‘business as usual’ are monitored, emergency services and traffic contractors are advised, and information systems such as variable message boards and public information channels for drivers and other users are activated.
Auckland’s traffic volumes have increased exponentially over time, and now the motorway network through Auckland carries an average of more than 900,000 vehicle trips per day on 220km of motorway. The Auckland network carries more than 8 per cent of the nation’s traffic over 140 structures, from small culverts to large bridges.
It’s essential that this multimillion dollar asset works hard to support the economic and safe movement of freight and people, as this contributes so much to the economic welfare not just of Auckland and surrounds, but to the country as a whole.
JTOC is truly a joint operations centre, since it is managed and financed by the NZ Transport Agency and the Auckland Council through its CCO, Auckland Transport. Working with the Auckland Motorway Alliance (AMA) the Transport Agency’s motorway operational arm as well as the JTOCs in Wellington and Christchurch, it is bringing efficiencies and convenience to a whole range of users – and operating well as “One Network”.
