The Daily Telegraph

Drivers’ mobile phone signals will help to beat jams

Motorists to be monitored by York council team in pioneering scheme to reduce congestion

- By Olivia Rudgard SOCIAL AFFAIRS CORRESPOND­ENT

MOBILE phones will be monitored to ease traffic congestion as part of a major trial.

York City Council will use drivers’ and passengers’ phone signals to track how cars move around the historic city in an effort to ease jams.

The new system will collect signals via the internet or using sensors on the roadside, and if successful could be rolled out across the country.

The council said the detectors would be fitted to lights, bollards, and other street furniture and would detect and process anonymous “signatures” from people using mobile phone services.

The data used will be harvested by beacons which collect data called a “MAC address” from passing phones, a unique code each device broadcasts as it searches for Wi-fi networks or Bluetooth devices. The only way to opt out of the scheme would be to turn off Wifi and Bluetooth. The code for each car would change every day.

The council may also buy anonymised data from mobile phone companies. Informatio­n will also be collected from satellite navigation systems and will eventually track “connected cars” which have their own Wi-fi systems and provide drivers with informatio­n about traffic and provide parking assistance.

The system will include data about weather patterns and allow officers to change traffic light sequences based on the weather – for example, if there is a sudden downpour, with the aim of making the changes automatic.

A grant worth £450,000 from the Department of Transport, launched this month, will fund a pilot scheme on one road, the A59 entering York, which will eventually expand across the city, funded by £2.85 million from a government fund. The council said the plans would make York “one of the most advanced cities in the country”.

“Being able to build things like traffic light signalling based on the journeys people really make every day will mean better decisions, less congestion and improved air quality.

“We can’t simply build more roads in the city, so this is a really innovative way to get the city moving as efficientl­y as possible,” Cllr Ian Gillies, York council leader, said.

The council also said the scheme was made possible by the city’s ultra-fast fibre broadband.

Data will also be fed into schemes for redesignin­g junctions and improving roads. The data “will be stored in a secure cloud subject to UK government security principles,” the council said.

Last month, bus company Firstgroup announced that it would roll out new technology allowing buses to communicat­e with smart traffic lights, keeping them green for longer if a bus was running late.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom