Motorway On-line Advisor (MOLA)

TRL has worked closely with the Highways Agency to develop the MOLA decision-support system which was originally installed in Kent Police Control Office (PCO) and is now installed in the South East Regional Control Centre (SERCC).

TRL is the sole system developer and maintainer for MOLA. It's an extremely powerful decision-support tool with processes and features specifically designed to aid traffic managers. MOLA models the traffic effects of different combinations of diversion messages posted on strategic Variable Message Signs (VMS) in order to recommend to traffic managers which diversion strategy to implement to alleviate the effects of an incident on the road.

MOLA contains a unique combination of features which include real-time origin-destination matrix optimisation (using live traffic data feeds); it considers the impact of potential diversion strategies on a variety of criteria including delay, journey time and environmental impacts; it's able to accept inputs of weather data (current and predicted) and model the impact on traffic; it's also capable of modelling the effects of hard-shoulder running, ramp metering and variable speed limits on traffic.