Traffic incident management

The Control Centre features several bases of intervention and maintenance support agents (AIAM in Spanish) strategically distributed in different access points for the resolution of tunnel incidents.

Incident resolution is one of the most important tasks that we carry out in Emesa, because it allows a correct operation of the road 24/7 and prevents incidents from ending in casualties in terms of health and safety. For traffic incident management, we have a team of over 100 people including intervention and maintenance support agents (AIAM) and security guards operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, who attend to around 13,000 annual incidents ―9,500 in the surface and 3,500 inside the tunnels.

Emesa also collaborates with the emergency services for incident resolution, integrating the City Police into the Control Centre team and being in constant communication with 112 (Emergency telephone number). Thanks to all these resources, we have one of the best response times for incidents on the roads of Spain, with a figure of around 5 minutes, as well as a significantly lower mortality rate than the average interurban road in Spain.

The intervention and maintenance support agents, who have a privileged inside knowledge of the facilities, are in charge of the traffic incident management inside the tunnels. They are strategically distributed in 4 bases located at the tunnel accesses:

• The Portugal Base, located in front of 157 Extremadura Avenue
• The Calderón Base, located in 4 San Ambrosio Street
• The Méndez Álvaro Base, located in 95 Méndez Álvaro Street
• The Valencia Base, located in A-3, kilometre point 3,400 on the left-hand side of the road.

The surveillance work that the Emesa team conducts is constant: the Control Centre, which uses more than 1,000 cameras distributed throughout the infrastructure, also has a team of mobile security guards who make daily trips along the M- 30 to detect anomalies and manage traffic incidents. This allows a swift response in case of an incident detection anywhere on the road.

All teams have a very specialised training in incident resolution, signalling and first aid, in addition to specific training in the use of automatic defibrillators, which they carry in their vehicles. In our commitment to differential technology that ensures user health and safety, the M-30 became the first road in the world in 2016 to have a cardiac protected tunnel.

The fleet of vehicles for traffic incident management includes motorcycles, for easier access to the incident point, and cranes for the rapid removal of damaged vehicles. The tunnels also have underground routes for the exclusive use of incident resolution personnel that guarantee quick access to any road coordinates in a matter of minutes.

Therefore, we can claim that the effective combination of a highly-trained human team, a fleet of versatile vehicles and differential technology makes us one of the best traffic incident managers in one of the busiest roads in Spain.