Funding for new technology that could help stop potholes from
forming has been announced by the Transport Secretary Chris
Grayling. The government will provide £22.9 million for research
and trials on new surface materials or pothole repair. Real-world
tests of new road surfaces and technologies in eight local
authorities will see which emerging innovations provide long-term
solutions. The Live Labs projects will be delivered by councils —
including Kent, Staffordshire,...Request free trial
Funding for new technology that could help stop potholes from
forming has been announced by the Transport Secretary .
The government will provide £22.9 million for research and trials
on new surface materials or pothole repair.
Real-world tests of new road surfaces and technologies in eight
local authorities will see which emerging innovations provide
long-term solutions. The Live Labs projects will be delivered by
councils — including Kent, Staffordshire, Reading, Suffolk and
Solihull and Birmingham — and if successful, could be adopted by
other authorities.
These schemes include expanding the test of plastic roads in
Cumbria, using kinetic energy off Buckinghamshire roads to power
lighting and using geothermal energy created from paths to keep
car parks and bus stations in Central Bedfordshire from freezing
over.
Transport Secretary said:
Potholes are the number one enemy for road users and this
government is looking at numerous ways to keep our roads in the
best condition.
Today’s trials will see how new technologies work in the real
world to ensure our roads are built for the 21st century.
In the Budget in November, the Chancellor announced an additional
£420 million for road maintenance for 2018 to 2019 financial
year. This brings the total funding for pothole repair and
roads maintenance, including the Live Labs project, from 2015 to
2020 up to £6.6 billion.
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Buckinghamshire
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Ringway Jacobs (Contractors), Transport Systems Catapult,
Aylesbury Garden Town, Aylesbury Vale Council, Coldharbour
Parish Council, Bucks and Thames Valley LEP and Enlight
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The council would work with Transport Catapult Systems and
an innovative partner to manufacture recycled
plastic/composite columns to mount lighting sensors, 5G
antenna and large format schemes in public areas. They will
also use sensors to collect data across their highway
network including the use of a central management data
system to collect data on air quality, road surface
temperature, ANPR, CCTV.
They will also include the application of gulley sensors at
various locations to help improve efficiency in highways
maintenance service. In addition they will use new kinetic
energy recovery from the carriageway to harvest energy in
roadside battery units. The Live Lab will also introduce
new solar energy generation including solar roads and
footways. The bid includes a new turbine to help harvest
energy to power street furniture using the wind. It will
also include on-street charging points, a new e-bike hire
scheme and a trial at Aylesbury of autonomous pods.
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£4.49 million
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Central Bedfordshire
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Ringway Jacobs (Contractors), Morgan Sindall, Jacobs and
Vinci
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The bid would test solar power in a number of footways to
create and store energy. The bid also would install a
surface course in Flitwick town centre using solar or
kinetic power capability. They would include a “Power Road”
solution, already piloted successfully in France, to use
geothermal energy connected to water pipes laid just below
the surface to de-ice car parks/bus stations in sub-zero
weather conditions.
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£1.05 million
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Cumbria
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University of Nottingham, University of Central Lancashire,
University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia), University of
California (USA), MacRebur Ltd and
Gaist
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To extend Cumbria’s existing trial of the use of plastic
roads. The trial will also would produce a guidance
document on the use of this new surface material solution
and also an APP.
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£1.6 million
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Staffordshire
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Amey (Contractor), Keele University and UI
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This project addresses the issue of how the concept of a
Smart Highways network can be extended from primary roads
to a local road network. The project will be developed
around the private road network on the “small town” living
laboratory of the Keele University campus. The project will
develop, test and demonstrate how such a network can be
enabled to retrofit Smart Highway design, construction and
maintenance to support the use of alternative approaches to
both people and freight transport. A control centre to
function as an asset and data manager will be integrated
with sensor and control technologies. The living laboratory
will be adjacent to a proposed public transport hub to
enable rapid roll-out of development The Highways and AV
living laboratory base at Keele University will focus on
the development, testing and demonstration of Smart
infrastructure and its interaction with new service
propositions, CAVs and
people and alternative fuels with a particular focus on
rural and small community roads. The objective will be to
develop new approaches to: instances of congestion and
incidents; improved user / customer experience /
perceptions and health; improved real-time network
understanding (assets and their use); improved citizen
engagement; optimisation of network assets and whole system
performance and improved air quality through the
development of carbon reduction approaches. To deliver
these objectives the project will establish a new control
centre to act as an asset manager and data broker between
different services and provide the platform to which new
technology can be tested, as far as possible in a plug and
play approach. This will be integrated with the deployment
of a number of different sensors across the Keele Campus
road and energy network to establish what is required for a
minimum viable product.
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£3.95 million
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Kent
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Amey (contractor), University of Birmingham, MAP16, UI and
Rezatec
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The bid would be for a local highway asset management
technology incubator and would create a centralised digital
hub for all asset management data. This would link to
dynamic network sensors which are linked to assets such as
drainage, winter service (gritters) and gulleys. It should
lead to more efficient highways maintenance service and
allow funding to go further.
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Reading
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Siemens, University of Reading, 02 Telefonica, Peter Brett
Associates, Wyra, Smarter Grid Solutions, Wokingham BC,
Bracknell Forest Council, West Berks Council, Slough
Borough Council, Royal Borough of Windsor Council, Thames
Valley LEP and
Shoothil
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The proposal will utilise existing infrastructure and smart
communication technology. Existing sources of data from
traffic signal detectors will be fused with mobile phone
data in order to provide a multi-modal view of real time
movement across the Thames Valley. This will link with air
quality data to produce a public health exposure model. The
data is expected to inform transport, environment and
planning projects throughout the Thames Valley region.
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£4.75 million
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Suffolk
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Kier Infra (Contractor), Kier Housing, University of
Suffolk, Proving Services and Future Highways Research
Club, CU Phosco, Telensa, enLight, British Telecom, British
Standards Institute (BSI), Institution of
Lighting Professionals and HEA
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Adapt or replace lighting columns to make them suitable for
use as charging points or Wi-Fi hubs. Plus trialling
sensors from multiple suppliers to see which work best in
various conditions. All trials to be scalable so suitable
for rolling out nationwide.
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£4.41 million
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Solihull and Birmingham (part of Transport for West
Midlands) Joint Bid
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Hanwha Corporation, T.I.S (Mansfield Ltd), 4sight Imaging,
University of Birmingham (along with Walsall Borough
Council, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and
Warwickshire County Council
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TfWM would
support and lead the collaboration. The team would take
data from video analytics pilots in 10 selected local road
corridors, collect, analyse and model it. The pilots would
build up a picture using video analytics to work out point
to point vehicle journey times during different time
windows. Analytics will also learn journey times. As well
as number plate recognition it will identify other features
and colours from vehicles such as e.g. logistics company
brands. Further lines of investigation may include
monitoring of cycle usage and pedestrians, which would be
of benefit in programmes such as the West Midlands rollout
of Next Bike regional bike share schemes. The team will
bring analytics through to push messaging via existing
applications like WAZE, City Mapper and Google who would
help target messaging; as well as vehicle manufacturer
navigation systems (OEMs) and variable-message signs on
local roads. The messaging would enable people to make
travel decisions with a higher degree of accuracy. The
result would be to re-mode, re-time, re-route or remove
their journey. Video analytics would enable the team to
monitor the impact of the messaging around areas of planned
disruption. At the same time the project would look at
human behaviour– using ethnographic and market research
along the selected corridors and seeing how people react
and take action as a results of the messaging. This would
build out from a piece of work on personas undertaken by
Exploring Intelligent Mobility.
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£2.65 million
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Note: The Staffordshire and Kent project are combined into one
Live Lab project.
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