intelligent city transport hubs - iet

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As cities continue to grow fuelled by cultural change and people moving from the countryside to urban areas, the movement of these populations are providing opportunities for innovation, yet require sustainable solutions in energy supply, the built environment and transport. Towns like Milton Keynes and Stevenage were developed to relieve the pressure of London’s limited capacity over 30 years ago, but can we learn valuable lessons from these new developments? Is there a better way of developing our future living environments and the transport systems that will support them?

Essential Engineering Intelligence for Transport

Intelligent City Transport Hubs: Characteristics for success

Knowledge TransferNetwork

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IET Sector Insights

BackgroundCity transport hubs already provide daily challenges to the engineering community in order to maintain their operation. These challenges include scheduling, meteorological disruption, asset optimisation, accessibility for users, compliance, information management, user movement and over-crowding. Even now, these hubs need to explore better ways of adding value to the areas in which they serve.

Are there new systems that need to be developed? Maybe the technologies are there but the applications need to be assessed? Possible new applications should be considered to future proof the transport hubs we need to continue to operate long past their originally planned lifespan. Are users at the forefront of the objective of current systems integration practices?

A thriving city has an efficient transport system supported by optimised transport hubs. If that is what success looks like, what are the characteristics of success?

To explore the challenges faced by growing urban centres and to identify key characteristics for successful deployment, maintenance and use of transport hubs, the IET and Electronics, Sensors, Photonics Knowledge Transfer Network (ESP KTN) collaborated together bringing leading experts for a roundtable discussion on the current thinking, future opportunities for efficient systems integration and draw out key priorities that must be addressed by transport stakeholders.

To kick start the discussions, Stephen Hart, Lead on Integrated Transport from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) gave his insight into the challenges and opportunities for Transport Hubs.

Integration of Transport Systems

Mega trendsThe TSB have conducted some research to look at trends and drivers in terms of technology in the transport field. Transport and the economy are inseparable, and demand for transport globally is huge. Discussions of transport in this context are about means, not simply modes; for example, elderly people rely on transport to get around, the health service currently accounts for 15-22% of traffic on the roads, and the scale of the tourism industry is impacted by airport capacity. The TSB have developed the concept of ‘mega trends’ identifying who relies on transport, its energy usage, pollution, congestion, technology, innovation and demographics.

What’s the business case?Research commissioned by the TSB highlighted that healthcare, automotive and fuels, tourism and logistics were worth £600 billion to the UK economy and, according to the CBI, the UK’s traffic system and congestion were already costing its economy £20 billion annually. The UK was losing 375,000 tourists annually due to a lack of airport capacity, and passenger mobility, overcrowding on trains and the quantity of goods carried by ferry were all expected to increase significantly. There is a real business case for developing an integrated transport system. This then led the TSB to consider if congestion was the main problem?

Congestion is a symptom of a wider problem. Fragmented local solutions were failing to solve the problem; it was necessary to move people and goods more intelligently. This fragmentation, along with a lack of information and isolated data, introduced wastage into the process of getting from A to B and prevented efficiencies being realised. It was necessary to innovate in order to get people to think differently about transport.


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Transport hubs and the way forwardSystems integration could bring together all the subsystem components into a single, connected local system, harnessing technological advances to make things work together and overcome wastage. Applications of collaborative systems in modern cars demonstrate that the intelligence already exists to realise more efficiency in the transport system. Introducing emerging technologies to the industry and developing a more innovative supply chain was estimated to be worth £900 billion in new business globally. Action needs to be taken before congestion reached saturation point, and consideration needed to be given to the pace of innovation before taking such action. The process of integration could be facilitated by a systems integrator, acting to allow people in different industries, who currently communicated in different languages, to collaborate.

Discussion and debate with expertsExperts from a wide range of organisations considered the research by the TSB and discussed the issues at hand.

One expert advocated accounting predictions of future demand for any reductions in demand that would be brought about by technological advances such as telemedicine and video-conferencing. Stephen Hart stated that the TSB was looking for ways in which the UK could get ahead of the game in this respect, and was seeking to encourage people to start thinking beyond a five year horizon.

Professor Phil Blythe from Newcastle University pointed out that transport was a very complicated area, given the multiple layers of government involved and the fact that the behaviour of people had to be taken into account. Encouraging people to work from home did not necessarily reduce their travel or energy footprints. He also commented that local authorities influence a lot of travelling choices; they largely have very little in-house expertise, leaving them vulnerable when trying to make the best decisions. The climate of austerity and making best use of legacy assets are also key factors in local authority decision making.


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Another expert advocated incorporating condition-based monitoring systems into the traffic system. Jeremy Acklam from Venture Capitalists suggested this would not be possible, given the number of people trying to control it. However, if an open set of standards and data was available, the private market would make use of it. Although it should be noted that an on-going factor is typically with integrating aging systems that don’t meet standards to try and make best use of legacy assets in an austerity climate.

Graham Parkhurst from the University of West of England questioned the predictability of growth in road traffic, which in the past had been overestimated. Nevertheless, population growth would drive an increase in traffic; migrants may be looking for different things from the transport system and it was necessary to know more about the people who were going to be encouraged to think differently. More people were prepared to share resources and assets. More vehicles were not needed; the focus should be on how to fill the seats in existing vehicles. In this respect, increasingly virtual hubs were important and may lead to less routine travel but more unpredictable longer-distance travel. It was pointed out that, while fewer young people were getting driving licences due to the costs of running a car and digital technologies available, there were currently insufficient incentives to attract them to use public transport and this needed to change so that public transport was clearly seen as the preferred choice.

A trend towards cars being used as a service would have its own economic impact in terms of the number of vehicles that were manufactured. Paula-Marie Brown from the IET suggested that such car-sharing services might not work as effectively outside London as they did within it.

Whilst scepticism was expressed that congestion would not continue to be a problem it was suggested that travel and congestion might become less predictable. Phil Williams from the ESP KTN pointed out that advances in online communications had been expected to reduce demand for international travel, but this had not been the case. Experts agreed, saying they saw Skype as encouraging travel, rather than reducing it. Experts also saw a challenge in creating affordable and sustainable intelligent mobility. It was suggested that car-sharing services could herald the emergence of a ‘buy-to-let’ dynamic in transport, where wealthy people provided vehicles for hire to those who could not afford them, although it was recognised that different economic drivers in the markets for housing and cars could be a factor.

It was put to the experts that there was a lot of intelligence in the system already that was not being used. Experts posited that the challenge was that decisions pertaining to the current and future transport network were typically made by local authorities, who did not have a lot of in-house expertise. It was suggested that some medium-sized cities were made exemplar early adopters, to demonstrate the benefits of a joined-up approach, and that the benefits should be quantified.

Improving the availability of information about a journey would increase the number of journeys people took, albeit probably reducing congestion. One expert argued that would nevertheless represent a success. Paula-Marie Brown pointed out that many people would not be able to change their behaviour on the basis of such information, given that they had to work from nine to five, and questioned what could be done to encourage business to move away from such a rigid working day.


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Jennie Martin from Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS UK) observed that the school run would remain at a fixed time, and that people working in many sectors did not have the flexibility to work from home.

Participants agreed that the Government was measuring the wrong thing by focusing on reducing journey times; instead, it should focus on improving predictability.

Graham Parkhurst from UWE argued that the transport system was currently very iniquitous, and expressed hope that technological advances would yield solutions that appealed across the board.

It was noted that, despite handling the largest number of passengers it ever had done, Transport for London (TfL) had achieved its best ever approval rating during the Olympics, owing to the number of front-line staff it had employed. Daniel Hobbs from AECOM suggested that knowing about people’s end journeys had helped TfL in this respect. Experts added that having the right information, rather than more, was important.

The Government’s own platform data.gov.uk is an existing national open network into which all operators or government bodies can input their data, allowing the market to generate solutions. This could be exploited to give greater usage within transport information provision.

Martin Ganley from the Buildings Research Establishment (BRE) advanced the industry-led building information modelling (BIM) as a model for such a system. However it was pointed out that while a lot of standards already existed, the market’s data needs and the commercial viability of data did not always accord with the Government’s requirement for inclusivity. The BRE expert reported that people were beginning to identify gaps in DfT and other data and filling them in, provided they knew they could sell such data on.

The TSB expert suggested that existing technology be employed to tackle small problems like intelligent traffic signals. Professor Blythe from Newcastle University reported that Compass4D had introduced urban cooperative systems to Newcastle and included a project to regulate vehicles’ speeds in order to reduce congestion.

Graham Parkhurst from UWE asked whether it would be necessary to employ ‘enablers’ to interpret new information and technology and tell people what their best options were. Martin Ganley from BRE raised Nest and Hive, which provided people with some information but wasn’t clear on how best to use it. The suggestion being that it might be necessary to determine how much input and control to give people rather than letting them do everything.


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IET Sector Insights

Participants discussed at what level such technological advances would best be implemented. Some argued that they had to be introduced at national level, although acknowledgement was made that Government had devolved much decision-making to local authorities. Conclusions and recommendationsExperts agreed that the service provision of a transport hub will look very different in 20 years’ time. There will be a mixture of physical and virtual elements providing better information and choices for consumers.

They concluded that more effort in providing information that was clear and user-friendly by all segments of the population was a key priority.

The pace of change in this space is moving so fast it is becoming difficult to keep some form of structure to what is going on. There is a danger that we become reactive. All transport stakeholders must remain on top of latest technological and societal changes, and try to steer all activities; otherwise, consumers and providers will end up with something that is not needed or used.

Participants advanced the following recommendations and suggestions for further actions:

n Establish an intelligent transport hub showcase within a medium-sized town or city. Given the resource constraints and fragmentation problems faced by local authorities, it was suggested this could only be led by the DfT, Catapults, KTNs and the TSB

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could all potentially provide funds and a platform for realising the innovation potential. A programme already underway that, in part, could provide real time results of integrating transport systems in an urban environment is the Future Cities programme, a competition won by the city of Glasgow in early 2013. The city will become a demonstrator in what can be achieved by innovative use of today’s technology and results will be made available to innovative UK businesses and will provide valuable learning to enable them to test and develop integrated new urban solutions.

nSeek additional funding to demonstrate for a medium size (non-London) town or city from European sources, in particular the European Commission’s (EC) Horizon 2020 programme.

n Pursue a dual-track approach aimed at encouraging Government to make data available, and enabling the private sector to use that data to develop apps.

n Tap into the existing research agendas on future citizens, with particular reference to the effects of migration, and on the behavioural aspects of people’s interaction with information and technology that is made available to them. Identify who will enable people to interpret information, and who will bear the cost of such enablers.

n Seek to publicise more effectively the standards and data currently available.

n Identify existing projects in this area, potentially by tapping into the European Commission’s ‘ITS observatory’.

n Seek to achieve better use of existing transport in order to increase capacity and improve accessibility.

Jennie Martin, Secretary General, ITS-UK (Facilitator)

Stephen Hart, Lead, Integrated Transport, Technology Strategy Board

Jeremy Acklam, Director, Venture Innovators

Professor Phil Blythe, Professor of Intelligent Transport Systems and Director,

Transport Operations Research Group, University of Newcastle

Paula-Marie Brown, Head of Transport, Institution of Engineering and Technology

Martin Ganley, Director of Electronics, BRE

Daniel Hobbs, Regional Director, Transportation, AECOM

Bruce McLelland, Senior Manager, The Knowledge Transfer Network

Graham Parkhurst, Director, Centre for Transport and Society, University of the

West of England

Zoe Squires, Head of Built Environment, Institution of Engineering and Technology

Phil Williams, Senior Manager, The Knowledge Transfer Network

Participants

intelligent city transport hubs - iet

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