Incident support

Transport Scotland provides the Trunk Road Incident Support Service (TRISS) to help deal with incidents on our trunk roads.

TRISS is a patrol service provided by Transport Scotland as part of our ITS Action Plan. It was introduced in May 2005 and has since been extended to cover Scotland’s busiest trunk roads and motorways.

At present, six TRISS vehicles pro-actively patrol our motorways and trunk roads, dealing with incidents quickly and effectively.

TRISS supports the emergency services in clearing incidents. Its primary aim is to improve journey time reliability by managing and reducing the impact of disruption caused by incidents on motorways and trunk roads.

TRISS improves safety and security for travellers by early identification and removal of incidents, resulting in a reduction of secondary accidents.

Typical activities include:

• Under Police instruction, make incidents safe by deploying temporary traffic management
• Relieve congestion and remove hazards to safety by clearance of debris from traffic lanes and hard shoulders
• Where possible make repairs to damaged parts of our trunk roads
• Offer assistance to broken down vehicles including assisting in removing broken down vehicles to safe locations.

Transport Scotland’s ITS Action Plan has invested over £28M since 2007. The plan has helped deliver 139 Variable Message Signs, 132 CCTV cameras, 10 journey time sites, 50km of communications ducting and cable infrastructure, internet protocol equipment and upgrades to the system upgrades to the Traffic Scotland service.

TRISS is provided by the Operating Companies as part of their contract with Transport Scotland. The service operates 7 days a week between the morning and evening peaks. TRISS coverage includes:

• M8
• M73
• M74
• A725
• M80
• M77
• A720
• A1
• M9
• M90
• A92
• A823(M)
• A985

From time to time TRISS is deployed at major sporting and music events to minimise the impact of event related congestion.

If you have any suggestions on how we might improve the ITS system, or any comments on the use of TRISS vehicles, please contact us.