New locator system brings aid to helpless motorists on NLEx

Experiencing car trouble along the North Luzon Expressway (NLEx)?

Not to worry. Help is on the way—in less than 10 minutes.

Tollways Management Corp., operator of the NLEx, gave this assurance to motorists out to pay their respects to the dead during the long weekend.

The TMC, after all, has begun using a new technology that combines global positioning and geographic information systems which, it said, would cut short the response time to motorists in trouble to less than 10 minutes.

“Before, we would use the radio and ask the patrol vehicles where they are. Now, we use the Automatic Vehicle Locator System (AVLS),” Gerry Aberilla, TMC vice president for traffic operations, told reporters in a presentation of the new technology at the NLEx Compound in Balintawak, Caloocan City, on Tuesday.

The AVLS, which is used by the most modern expressways overseas, is a combination of hardware, software and maps that enables traffic specialists in a control room to track down patrol vehicles deployed on the thoroughfare in real time.

This allows them to immediately dispatch the nearest patrol car to the area where the accident happened, Aberilla said.

He added that the AVLS can also check on its personnel on the road.

“If somebody takes the car outside of his tour of duty, an alarm goes off at the traffic control room,” Aberilla said.