Hertfordshire County Council is to introduce a county-wide intelligent transport systems (ITS) strategy.

One of the first ITS initiatives will be the replacement of the existing urban traffic control (UTS) system with a new urban traffic management and control (UTMC) system, which will co-ordinate traffic signals, detect and manage traffic incidents, inform road-users of delays and congestion, and link in with other systems.

The introduction of an automatic vehicle location (AVL) system will make it possible to track buses and winter service vehicles, and predict when they are due to arrive at their chosen destination.

Future use of the technology could see a system where the location of the vehicles will be known at all times so that they can avoid being delayed by accidents, roadworks or road closures. Electronic travel information systems will be upgraded to display real-time data generated by the AVL systems. This could go direct to a passenger’s mobile phone, computer or sat-nav before they start a journey.

The council is also looking at how the AVL system could be used to share passenger transport information with adjoining authorities.