Better information for your journey
The National Traffic Control Centre collects real-time information on road conditions
Lane Hog!
John Stapleton looks into why people Lane Hog and what effects it has on the driver hogging the lane and other road users.
Educating tomorrow's drivers
See how we are driving through key messages about safety on our network for the drivers of tomorrow.
Meet the Ancestors
Find out about the history of roads and the work the Agency does to preserve archaeological remains.
See when traffic will be lightest
Our traffic forecaster can help get you there quicker
- NTCC Procurement
- National Guidance Framework for Operational Activities between Local Highway Authorities and the Highways Agency
- Links
- National Guidance Framework
- National Guidance Framework for Operational Activities
- Strategic Traffic Management
- The Highways Agency's Traffic Control Centre Project
- Highways Agency report on Regional Traffic Control Centres consultation
- Regional Traffic Control Centres
National Traffic Control Centre
Overview
The National Traffic Control Centre is the hub of the English motorway network. It is one of the key ways in which the Highways Agency is delivering its strategic aims of “safe roads, reliable journeys and informed travellers.” It is our source of real-time traffic information.
The state-of-the-art, £160m centre is based adjacent to junction 3 of the M5 at Quinton near Birmingham. It was officially opened by the then Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling on the 30 March 2006. The National Traffic Control Centre was set up under the government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme. This means a private contractor, Traffic Information Services (TiS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Serco Integrated Transport has responsibility for delivery against pre-agreed objectives in exchange for agreed sums of money.
The main objectives of the National Traffic Control Centre are:
- Providing accurate real-time traffic information to the public using a number of different methods
- Minimising the congestion caused by incidents, roadworks and events taking place near the motorway and trunk road network
- Providing information on diversions to help motorists avoid the queues
In order to achieve these objectives, we collect information from many different sources, analyse it and then disseminate it to the public in a number of different ways. This process is explained further over the next few pages.
