Data is becoming increasingly important in driving decisions around transport policy, infrastructure and related services. In early 2020 the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) identified a need to develop a more holistic understanding of the entire road network in England to support Covid-19 pandemic decision making. 

Through a commission via the Transport Technology Forum (TTF) on behalf of DfT, Arup’s intelligent mobility specialists and transport consultants were asked to support an urgent initiative that requested local authorities and private companies to share their travel and transport data. The Arup-led commission developed a data pipeline to support the UK Government in understanding how lockdown measures were impacting travel movements on roads across England.  

The work was a collaborative effort across the industry, with the DfT, Arup and White Willow Consulting working closely with over 40 local authorities and private data providers. Traditionally, travel and transport data on local roads is managed separately by different local authorities with different standards, levels of quality, and availability. The project overcame these challenges, creating a central data repository that provided the industry with a more complete and up-to-date understanding of England’s transport network.

Making sense of data from different sources 

The team collected data from 6,000 traffic and cycling sensors, automated traffic counters, bluetooth devices, automatic number plate recognition cameras and CCTV. As the data was collected and processed in different ways by various authorities, the team applied a schema to collate the data into a useable, consistent format for analysis. 

As well as collecting motor vehicle movements, the team also processed cycling datasets covering 29 local authorities and parking datasets from 30 providers, totalling 11.5 million movements. The traffic and cycling data pipeline now collates data into a central repository to support analysis. This provides key intelligence for the DfT and other Departments in Government, including areas such as economic activity and the take-up of active travel.  

The insights from the data pipeline were published as weekly digests by the TTF, the UK’s forum funded by the DfT and Innovate UK that seeks to bring leadership, direction and support to stimulate investment in innovation and technology solutions within transport. The project team also shared data with local authorities, which they can use to inform planning decisions and better meet the changing needs of the public. 

This work provides an increased understanding of the whole transport network in England, presenting exciting applications beyond its original purpose. The data is expected to inform future transport infrastructure and policy decisions, such as where new infrastructure may be needed to meet demand. 

The project was announced as the ITS-UK ‘Project of the Year’ in 2020 and was highly commended in the category for ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Covid-19 Response’ at the British Construction Industry Awards, which both acknowledged the important role it played in responding to the pandemic. 

 

I think about the COVID data digests that was run by Arup, a weekly data collection, which was absolutely fantastically helpful collecting that data from local authorities because we were looking at data nationally but really needed to understand what was happening in individual local authorities as we were considering having local lockdown.

Professor Phil Blythe

Chief Scientific Advisor

Partners & collaborators

White Willow Consulting