The City of York is set to launch a groundbreaking scheme to trial the use of data from vehicles for signal control to improve junction performance.
The scheme is set to cost £3m and is funded by the Department for Transport and the National Productivity Investment Fund, with a view to being rolled out elsewhere if successful.
York is believed to the first city in Britain to use high-tech beacons that can detect drivers' mobile phones and signals from vehicles themselves to monitor traffic flows. The council insisted that the data would be anonymised and stored in a cloud system that meets government security rules.
A trial will be launched in June using six sensor sites on the A59 between the city centre and the city boundary. The sensors will be mounted on traffic lights, bollards and street signs.
The information will be used to make better decisions about traffic light patterns so that traffic runs more smoothly and journey times are cut in a similar fashion to the SCOOT system in traffic lights.
The pilot scheme will ultimately be designed to communicate directly with driverless cars.
In a report the council said: 'Data from vehicles is becoming more and more available but to date has not been used for signal control to improve junction performance. [The scheme called] Eboracum aims to improve junctions on the A59 corridor in York in line with local policy objectives using vehicle data instead of fixed roadside technology.'
Objectives of the scheme include:
- Using commercial Floating Vehicle Data data to improve signal performance
- Understanding how to practically migrate from fixed infrastructure to connected vehicles
- Exploring Wi-Fi, 5g and G5 radio performance in semi rural areas
- Linking to vehicles by OBD2 to identify vehicle performance
- Collecting data to help plan the future of York’s transport
- Examining the evolution path for a typical UK Local Authority
