The Madrid City Council, through the Works and Equipment Area, has activated this Monday a set of nine speed information panels in the tunnels of Ventisquero de la Condesa, María de Molina, Sor Angela de la Cruz, Santa María de la Cabeza and Cristo Rey "whose mission is not to fine, but to detect and record the speed at which vehicles circulate and inform drivers in real time if they exceed the established limit."
These panels measure speed by means of a radar that allows vehicles to be controlled from a distance of 150 meters and, automatically, display their speed on the panels, informing the driver if it is higher than the maximum allowed at any given time, explained the capital city council in a statement.
The speed limit may vary in tunnels, for example, if there is congestion, there is a broken down vehicle, or the pavement is wet from rain, among other situations. In this way, the information will become a visual stimulus, which will allow the driver to correct their speed.
The data will be incorporated into the tunnel control system, which will allow its evaluation and the detection of risk patterns for users.
The choice of the five tunnels for the installation of these information panels is related to the most common accidents detected in them, which are usually a consequence of high speed. For example, in the María De Molina tunnel, rear-end accidents are the most common, while in the Ventisquero de la Condesa tunnel they tend to have more to do with impacts against the sides. Likewise, it seeks to minimize the high speeds detected in the Santa María de la Cabeza tunnel.
The action is included in the improvements offered by the winner of the contract for the exploitation and conservation of the urban tunnels with centralized control of the Madrid City Council and do not represent an additional cost for the City Council.
With these panels, the Madrid City Council takes another step in its commitment to improving safety in urban tunnels, which adds to actions such as the renewal of the coatings in Ventisquero de la Condesa, Ríos Rosas, Cristo Rey and, currently, in Plaza de Castilla.
Added to this is the modernization of the lighting systems with new LED equipment in the tunnels of the Argentine Republic, Manuel Becerra, Plaza de Castilla and the Dominican Republic and the "significant increase in maintenance and conservation work on the roads" with the use of specific equipment such as high-performance tunnel cleaning machines to guarantee the optimal condition of all infrastructures.
Madrid's urban tunnels, managed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from the Azca control center, total 40 infrastructures with more than 40 kilometers in total length through which more than a million vehicles circulate daily.
In addition to having a set of equipment such as fire detectors, cameras, fans, automated gates at the emergency exits and air quality detectors, which guarantee safety against any incident, they have variable information panels to notify, of in an automated manner, of singular events such as possible delays in the tunnel, excess vehicle clearances at its entrances and, from now on, information on speed.
