Nearly 250 transport technology industry professionals have heard how the Department for Transport’s funding of improvements to traffic signals are proven to have reduced delays. The revelation from data company INRIX was one of a series of announcements on the first day of the Transport Technology Forum’s conference in Leeds, which also heard a call for the North to lead the way in delivering joined-up technology improvements and plans for the TTF’s Data Working Group.
Dominic Paulo, a Senior Director at INRIX, revealed that this analysis using the INRIX Signal Analytics gathered from a network of connected vehicles showed an overall 15-40% improvement on all junctions in Hertfordshire where signals improvements had been carried out to improve traffic flow.
Five of the TTF’s Working Groups were represented during the day. “The Working Groups are the engine room of the TTF,” explained TTF Manager Darren Capes of the DfT. “The more people involved, the more the groups will prosper and that will give us more in government to think about, when it comes to policy and funding. These are really your chance to influence how the sector moves forward,” he said.
The UTMC group, led by Steve George of SG Transport Innovation and Mark Cartwright of Centaur Consulting discussed Digital Twins, and asked what are we building a digital twin, of and for, and whose digital twin it is? Mr Cartwright asserted that there is no coherent answer to this, and it is the UTMC Working Group’s job to answer, suggesting that the concept of UTMC, although this may not be the best name in the future, is a way to link digital twins. “The work with the ITS Community, in order to develop practical and useful mechanisms that enable the effective application of existing and innovative digital twins to the roads environment through integration and co-ordination,” he said.
Sarah Randall from the London Borough of Newham discussed smarter parking and the National Parking Platform. She encouraged authorities to share projects they are undertaking, and also to raise what should be discussed that currently is not. She explained about EV charging and parking, kerbside management, smart parking and future mobility and tackling vehicle crime. Mrs Randall also talked about NPED (National persistent evaders database). The National Parking Platform to provide a lot of information about parking to enable users to have one app that they understand and know to pay for parking everywhere. This helps authorities and parking operators by providing information to users and details to civil enforcement operators and the back office team, and will eventually handle payments. This benefits all local authority highways and transport professionals by providing high-quality data about journey end points which can help with transport planning. This also helps with procurement, because once you have joined the platform, you do not need to procure again.
Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Working Group Chair Shamala Evans-Gadgill gave a case study from her own council, Coventry, on implementing an on-street residential charging network in the city. Her explanation included essential advice on how to deliver a scheme, including a timeline, installation, ideas around enforcement and monitoring and examples of signage.
Christina Stathakopoulou from the DfT’s LEVI programme, outlined the transport decarbonisation plan and what makes a good LEVI bid, while Tim Gale from Cenex discussed the challenges to deliver high quality charge points in the right places. He told the meeting the LEVI delivery is all about upskilling authorities, and how the expanded pilot project has delivered 3,400 charge points across 16 authorities.
Mrs Evans-Gadgill also explained that this year the Working Group aims to develop framework templates for four key components of EVCI rollout. To prioritise their efforts, they conducted a survey via Survey Monkey in partnership with Lcrig, asking local authorities to rank the four essential components of EVCI deployment in the order they would like to see the templates built. The survey results showed that procurement was the most important, followed by site selection, consultation, and delivery. The Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Working Group is committed to implementing these priorities in 2023.
The revamped Data Working Group set out objectives to provide an opportunity for local authorities to raise data issues and help DfT to develop the Transport Data Strategy, facilitate communication and collaboration among local authorities, transport data experts, suppliers and relevant stakeholders, promote knowledge sharing and best and showcase use case experiences and approaches.
The Clearview Intelligence-sponsored conference also heard from a number of suppliers, with Chris Lodge of TRL talking about the next phase of the Digital Roads collaborative project.
Andy Hamilton of Yunex explained the company’s adaptive control in UTMC. He told how the company worked with the University of Southampton and local authorities around the world to understand strategic transport policies, which found three key themes; sustainable transport, resourcing and connectivity, and how Yunex’s FUSION product is a new adaptive control system improving network performance, developed in an agile way with Transport for London improving prioritisation for individual road users, reducing complexity, increases driver safety and comfort, and improving network performance.
Tim Whiteley from PDS Systems detailed a project on active travel and modality modelling his company undertook in the Netherlands where they measured active travel in the municipality of Groningen. This gave a better insight into the adoption and behaviour of transport modes within the main streets of the inner city centre, classifying between pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds and scooters. The Flowcube system has small sensors at 20 locations to analyse travel times and route choice, visualised on a real-time dashboard. This gained insight into pedestrian and cyclist behaviour in the city centre, variations across dayparts and the effects of Covid on the habits of commuters.
Mark Nicholson, CEO VivaCity Labs told about an AI-based approach to make roads safer. He pointed out that two thirds of drivers believe it is too dangerous to cycle on the roads, and said that the infrastructure needs to be changed to make the roads safer. He said authorities need better danger, and how computer vision is now able to work in 3D to better understand distances and timings between people and vehicles on roads to detect near misses, identify dangers and then identify solutions.
AI-based Intelligent Transport Systems expert Keith McCabe has suggested turning the north as an “exemplar” to deliver connected technology on a large scale. The Simplifai Systems CEO told the meeting that transport involves working with huge generators of traffic such as the health service and local authorities along with car companies to bring solutions to the challenges together.
Parking company Appyway talked about managing the kerbside . The company’s Commercial Director Matt Terry explained that by managing the kerbside with the digital kerb, it can improve congestion and air quality.
Martin Minear of Arup discussed the Covid local authority data project over the past three years and the lessons learned. He explained how the data was gathered to help understand the changing shape of traffic during Covid lockdowns and afterwards, to get greater insight on the local data network. He explained how the TTF is working on this long-term and is looking for more data to get an expanded insight into the local road network in the future.
Finally, the industry association for the transport technology sector, Intelligent Transport Systems UK has launched a study to identify the key overseas markets, opportunities and barriers to trade for the intelligent transport sector. The project, supported by the Transport Technology Forum and announced by ITS UK CEO Max Sugarman, will investigate which markets are the top priority for UK ITS businesses, with the aim of informing how Government and industry best support the sector in exporting more overseas.
The second day of the TTF Conference includes discussions policy, the relationship between national government and local authorities and international collaboration, as well as a keynote address from the DfT’s Chief Scientific Officer. There will also be the launch of the Manual for Smart Streets. (Picture – TTF)