Install, measure and move: the importance of portability in WIM systems

The owner of the road network, the Public enterprise roads of Serbia, was thus given a quick overview of the real traffic loads across the country, which is an important information for future road planning, maintenance and law enforcement authorities for whom the statistics on overloaded lorries is of crucial importance.

Due to the short time frame of the project, five SiWIM MkIV B-WIM systems were used simultaneously. They were installed by a two two-men team of Cestel’s field technicians, which on average took eight hours to install a B-WIM system. When a 14-day measurement on a particular bridge was finished, the system was de-installed, loaded into a van and transferred to a new location in the same day. Since the data gathered by SiWIM is accessible on-line, a traffic expert started preparing a traffic analysis report immediately after a measurement was completed.

The project in Serbia showcased practicality and cost-effectiveness of bridge weigh-in-motion systems when it comes to quickly mapping distribution of the traffic loading over large parts of the road network. This is especially important for countries, which are just beginning to invest in WIM technology, and can thus get a fast overview of hotspots where overloaded lorries have the largest impact on the road surface.