The largest roundabout in Plymouth made more efficient with smartmicro radars

Marsh Mills is the largest and busiest roundabout in Plymouth, Devon which sees around 35,000 vehicle movements a day. This roundabout was recently refurbished, and our detectors were selected over loops and magnetometers to provide the detection. Due to the size of the roundabout, it was deduced that ten sensors would be required – the single largest number of radars we have installed on a single site in the UK.

This was a massive undertaking which required two engineers to attend the site over a period of two night closures and one day on site, however all ten radars were installed, set up and commissioned on schedule. 

We asked Matthew Williams MOVA specialist from JSTSM, why smartmicro radars were chosen over traditional detection methods: 

“We originally produced a design in 2016 that included traditional detection, this would have required a lot of additional ducting especially on the entries to the roundabout, including the A38 which is a trunk road. At the time, due to the location of some of the detection, even then we were looking at an above ground solution due to maintenance concerns. A second scheme was produced using alternative forms of detection, but this still required significant TM to install the detection. Finally, when the smartmicro radar was available we were able to produce a design that removed many of the maintenance issues associated with detection installed in the carriageway, and also the requirement for extensive ducting on the entries to the roundabout.”

Nigel Taylor, Traffic Signals Engineer at Plymouth City Council commented: 
“smartmicro detection had been used on a few sites previously within Plymouth and working with both our maintenance contractor, SWARCO and MOVA specialist JSTSM, we opted to use smartmicro UMRR-11 series radars for the above ground detection. The roundabout has been commissioned and is successfully running on MOVA and the cost savings provided by using the smartmicro radars was substantial.” 

Marsh Mills Roundabout was a very large project where the non-intrusive technology of our multi-lane radars was clearly endorsed as the best solution by the consultants and customer alike. Not only was there the performance capability of the radar sensors paramount but coupled with the zero-maintenance required this offered the customer a huge cost-benefit.

Contact smartmicro to discuss the benefits of above ground detection and the use our radars in your junction design.