Drones provide live traffic footage to TfWM’s Regional Transport Coordination Centre

Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) are the first English public authority to establish their own in-house drone team

The drones will fly over congestion hotspots and traffic queuing at accident scenes or road closures and provide live footage to transport managers enabling them to better plan diversions and keep the public informed.

See the drone and the data it sends back at Re-imagining Transport, March 14, The Slate, University of Warwick

TfWM’s state-of-the-art Regional Transport Coordination Centre (RTCC) brings together a wide range of transport authorities, agencies and operators to work together on keeping the region moving during major events and incidents. It played a crucial role in moving millions of people around during the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

The RTCC and Safer Travel Command Centre, based in Birmingham, receives images from more than 2,500 fixed CCTV cameras covering the West Midlands major road, rail and tram networks, as well as some town and city centres - but there are gaps in the coverage, meaning they are unable to view traffic building up around some incidents.

Now, thanks to the new drone team, live images can be relayed back filling those gaps in coverage, at a fraction of the cost of installing and maintaining static CCTV cameras.