AB "Road maintenance" announces an innovation that will help ensure safety on roads of national importance in Lithuania even more effectively. The company integrated with Waze, a free navigation program that is becoming increasingly popular in Lithuania. In this way, road workers, performing permanent road maintenance works in accordance with the established requirements, receive additional data for work from drivers directly to the company's permanent road maintenance brigade programs.
"This innovation shows how users of Lithuanian national roads can effectively and usefully contribute to road safety, and our maintenance teams can use the data provided by them to manage accidents and remove obstacles. In this way, both road workers and drivers will contribute to even greater overall traffic safety on the roads", says the general director of AB "Keliau beraža", dr. Audrius Vaitkus.
According to him, this integration will allow AB "Keliau beraža" to identify problem areas even faster and include this data in defect removal tasks, to ensure more effective road maintenance. "Quality and safety are one of the strategic directions of "Road maintenance", therefore it is extremely important to ensure that roads of state significance, as far as permanent maintenance works can ensure, are safe and maintained in a timely manner, and the use of innovative technologies is one of the tools that help to achieve these goals", says dr. A. Vaitkus.
It should be noted that regardless of the source of data on road damage, the company is guided by the "Regulations of permanent maintenance of automobile roads KPV PN 23", which indicate the speed at which critical damage must be handled, based on the level of road maintenance of state importance. Each report from Waze is individually evaluated by several maintenance specialists, a task is formed for the defect removal team, measures are determined and assigned to ensure safe traffic. Active work is currently underway to find the best solution to quickly assess Waze data to determine if a bottleneck or breach is critical and needs to be addressed immediately. It is noticed that in certain cases it is much more effective to neutralize a whole group of lesions than to return to the same place several times to remove one path lesion.
Over 20 information systems are currently installed in "Road Maintenance" to increase operational efficiency. Some of them are intended for performing administrative functions, the other part for road maintenance activities. For example, one of the systems collects and processes meteorological data and provides recommendations for road maintenance works. Winter work information is collected using a mobile application, and since the last winter season, newer spreaders have been installed that transmit data automatically. It is precisely because of the support systems of IT solutions applied in the company that last year alone, even 63% more various road violations or traffic obstacles were recorded and fixed than in 2022.
AB "Kelia bereža" is responsible for more than 21 maintenance of kilometers of state roads throughout Lithuania. According to "Road maintenance", all roads of state importance are inspected at the specified periodicity. It also reacts according to the results of patrol inspections, received external reports, the sequence and importance of fixed defects. Upon receipt of critical information, priorities are changed and work is organized and executed immediately.
Although road workers are constantly conducting patrol inspections, 100 percent of them are captured and removed. not all accidents are possible, so drivers are asked to be alert in traffic and report obstacles in the most convenient way if they notice them. It is reminded that residents and drivers are invited to inform about dangerous cracks, damages or other obstacles that pose a risk to traffic safety by short tel. no. 1871 (the price of the short phone no. Telia, Tele2 in networks - 0,12 EUR/min., Bitė - 0,15 EUR/min.) or +370 5 232 9600 (price according to mobile operator's plan).
Waze is a free, real-time driving community-supported navigation and traffic monitoring app for mobile devices and cars that provides valuable information about road violations, obstacles and other hazards reported by drivers. The Waze community of drivers has the opportunity to exchange information, share data on the real situation on the roads: to indicate in which specific part of the road or street there are obstacles to traffic safety, what traffic restrictions, interferences or gaps have arisen, for example, dangerous potholes.
Integration with the aforementioned navigation and traffic monitoring application is the second new tool for road users this year. It is reminded that in January of this year, AB "Keliau berza" presented a public map of winter works, the purpose of which is to inform drivers in real time and give them the opportunity to assess where works have been carried out or where they are planned to be carried out, and to plan their journeys more safely.
