Traffic Center North Rhine-Westphalia (TC NRW)
Traffic management with 20 sub-centers in NRW
The traffic management tasks of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia are carried out by the NRW Traffic Control Center in Leverkusen. The traffic computer center (TCC) has been in operation there since the 1970s to control the roadside recording and display devices. Since April 2013 the tasks of the originally two traffic computer centers Leverkusen (Rhineland) and Recklinghausen (Westphalia) have been taken over by the new NRW Traffic Control Center. Since 2021 a total of eight workstations at the integrated center will ensure a twenty-four-seven monitoring and support of the traffic telematics systems in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The TC NRW collects information from 21 sub-centers. As a central data pool for all traffic data, it also acts as a source for mass data (interval-related traffic data), individual data, axle load data and hourly values. The latter are processed for selected sites for the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt).
The sub-centers manage a total of 36 directional route control systems to harmonize traffic and warn of congestion. Network control systems, some of them with variable direction signs in prism technology in automatic mode or as dynamic direction signs with integrated congestion information for diverting traffic flows, junction control systems for individual highway interchanges, ramp metering for regulating the inflow at interchanges, and congestion warning systems for spatially limited sections are used for control and information purposes.
All collected traffic data is used in parallel to generate traffic messages for detected message-worthy situations, which are broadcasted via radio and the RDS/TMC channel.
A graphical user interface allows access to all systems and all data to ensure the operation of the traffic control center. It is possible to gain access to all data and traffic-related infrastructures from all locations in the computer network of traffic centers and sub-centers. Organizational and legal restrictions and assignments are guaranteed by a user concept.
There are eight parallel workstations in the traffic center. All accruing data is stored platform-independently for long-term access. To support operational tasks, the recorded and long-term stored data can be evaluated according to traffic-related criteria. Past measures can be traced at any time through the evaluations and logs. This enables the continuous optimization of traffic management.
As part of the renewal of the tunnel equipment, tunnel control centers are increasingly being connected to the sub-center/TCC system.
