National media from sources including The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times have reported on York’s pilot scheme which aims to ease traffic congestion through monitoring drivers’ mobile phone signals and relaying this information to “smart” traffic lights.
As reported last year, York was named as a recipient of a Department of Transportation grant to fund a pilot scheme to take place on the A59, which will eventually expand across the city as a result of a further £2.58m of Government funding.
The trial will fit detectors to traffic lights and other street furniture to collect and relay anonymous signals from drivers’ or passengers’ WiFi networks or Bluetooth devices on their mobile phones. The data will be fed back to beacons which will be able to use this information to inform traffic control systems.
Data will also be collected from sat nav systems which in the future will be able to track “connected cars” with their own WiFi systems, which would give drivers real time information about traffic and parking issues.
If successful the system will allow the council to position traffic lights at points which will provide the smoothest flow of traffic and to allow traffic light sequences to alter as a result of volume or weather- ultimately automatically in the case of events such as a sudden downpour.
Council Leader Ian Gillies said: “This is potentially a really innovative way to get the city moving as efficiently as possible, and will allow us to build traffic lights and to redesign junctions and roads based on the journeys that people actually make every day.”
Cllr Peter Dew, executive member for transport and planning said: “Our famous historic city hasn’t room for more road so we have to use technology as much as tarmac to help our city to work for the needs of our residents and visitors in the 21st century.
“What happens on York’s roads over the next few years will help define how traffic is managed throughout the UK. This is a genuinely pioneering approach to making our roads safer and air cleaner, and this trial is made possible by our advanced digital infrastructure and ultrafast fibre broadband which is the best in the country.”
All data obtained during the study will be held in a secure cloud and the systems will fully comply with all data protection regulations.