Wolverhampton City Council has worked with traffic technology specialist SWARCO Traffic to streamline the city’s traffic management via the firm’s MyCity platform.
SWARCO said MyCity, which it described as ‘a modular Traffic Management Platform for whole cities’, enables the council to monitor pollution levels, journey times and vehicle counts.
It said MyCity performs the roles of a ‘traditional’ traffic management system such as traffic signal monitoring and control, car park guidance and VMS management and journey time monitoring, while also enabling new features such as EV charging management, micro-mobility, floating car data and air quality management.
The company added that it has been working in close partnership with the council since May 2019, ‘shaping the product to meet the needs of a UK authority, as well as the specific needs of Wolverhampton itself’.
SWARCO Traffic managing director John Pickworth said: ‘MyCity is open and able to interface with any existing solutions in a city. And, unlike some systems where you have to pay engineers for every new item to be added, new devices can be added at the click of a button, making this the ultimate traffic management platform.’
John Charles, the council’s road safety and sustainable travel team leader, said MyCity ‘provides a raft of information that is affording great control of the city’s traffic systems’.
He said: ‘With pollution monitoring that notifies us when NO2 reaches a certain level, vehicle counting for 19 different classifications – including motorbikes, public buses and taxis – a live map view of the congestion of routes and journey times, and in-depth reporting from millions of data points, we are provided with unsurpassed knowledge of how the network is performing.
‘This increased intelligence, enhanced communication channels and the ability to automate processes allows us to identify and respond more efficiently to incidents occurring across the City, making us better placed than ever to manage the highway network and support the regeneration of a cleaner, smarter city.’
