Monday, 14th November 2011 - 15:00

ITS for Breakfast

October saw the ITS UK Breakfast Meeting, held at The City of Edinburgh Council’s City Chambers, featuring three presentations looking at the future of Intelligent Transport Systems within an Urban Environment.

The first presentation was given by Douglas Rodger (that’s me) of IBI Group who was discussing work currently being undertaken with  Scottish Enterprise on Intelligent Mobility for Smart Cities. This project acknowledges that transport is a major driver of a cities competitiveness and that public transport and demand management are going to be key to delivering urban sustainability. It was also accepted that to ensure that the work became more than just a ‘talking shop’ the project delivery plan would be multi-phase, with initial work building on existing systems and progressively introducing more complex solutions reflecting advances in  smart technologies and harnessing key academic and industrial research.  A key element of the vision is for Scotland to be a living lab to support experimental solution development not possible with a conventional ‘design and implement’ approach. Although the project is still in its infancy I believe it was good to recognise that there is a danger of such a project becoming a ‘talking shop’ and that at the outset the focus will be on building on existing systems and data to get small projects moving and build momentum.

The second presentation was given by David Bonn of Mott MacDonald who took the brave approach of speaking without slides. Although the talk was titled ‘Glasgow/Edinburgh Smart City Challenges’ it could have been applicable to any city with the level of traveller information similar to that of large UK cities. He set out a user case where a family could plan their transport/travel requirements around the morning breakfast table based on what they had planned for the day. Using reliable road and public transport travel information he made the case for the use of incentives to get people thinking about their mode of travel and to possibly switch mode. For example, Dad was planning on taking the car to work, however he was alerted of an incident on his route before leaving that would impact on his journey. As an incentive he was offered half price tickets to the local cinema if he went by public transport instead and was provided with all the relevant information to plan his journey. By doing this at the breakfast table his young daughter saw the offer and helped persuade dad to change mode. This was a simple scenario but one that effectively showed how powerful the use of non-transport related incentives could be used to influence modal shift.

The third presentation was given by Robert Mansell from City of Edinburgh Council. He set out how the council have spent the last few years upgrading their traffic management and control systems to incorporate an upgraded UTC instation, digital communications to many UTC out-stations, a UTMC Common Database (CDB) and an ANPR based Journey Time System. Through the CDB they are currently providing DATEXII feeds to share data, for example sharing journey time information with Transport Scotland to provide seamless journey times when travelling from the inter urban network into the city centre. He then went on to discuss how through the use of multiple data sets, some of which are generated within his traffic control department via their UTMC CDB, and other external sources, it would be possible to create a city dashboard that could provide the network manager with an opportunity to obtain a snapshot of network performance. For example, Edinburgh features a number of water courses that can cause traffic disruption depending on the prevailing weather conditions. A simple dashboard that could interact with external data sources such as a flood detection feed could give the advanced notice required to put a plan in action rather than having to react to the flooding once it has happened.

The underlying theme from all of the presentations was that the data is out there, our next challenge, particularly within the urban environment, is achieving better integration and optimising the use of data sets. The possibility of bringing in incentives from other parts of society to influence peoples travel behaviour has the potential to make people think about their options as long as they are provided with a viable mode choice.

One other theme to come out of the discussion was what is the role of local authorities and central government in creating this interaction between potential data sets? With limited money to spend where should their focus be? Should they be focused on ensuring that the data being gathered is validated and robust before distributed in an open format that is then open to the market to decide on the interactions?

A very useful event held in the impressive surroundings of the City Chambers, interesting presentations, good discussions and free bacon rolls, a good start to the day.