There is a proven need for reliable, accurate road surface and environmental monitoring and motorist-alert systems on rural highways. These systems are frequently required along sections of isolated highways where conventional telephone services and power supplies are not readily available. Furthermore, when they are available, they are associated with both a high initial cost and significant ongoing annual costs. This paper describes a practical, low cost approach to the deployment of monitoring stations on rural highways that were recently implemented by Delcan for the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, with support from Transport Canada and ENTERPRISE. The deployed "Total Monitoring Station" (TMS) demonstrates the ability to cost-effectively interface to different combinations of field devices and sensors, to monitor road conditions and provide automatic warning to assist road operators in rural areas. For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD number E211521.
Abstract