Making roadworks work for London
Transport for London’s RoadLab hopes to end congestion and chaos caused by roadworks. Nicole Kobie reveals what’s different about the programme – and what it means for drivers
Potholes. Construction lorries parking illegally. Congestion from closed streets. Each of these perpetual annoyances is being addressed by Transport for London (TfL) as part of its new RoadLab roadworks programme, which also introduces the Internet of Things (IoT) to London roads.
The programme brings together nine startups and established businesses with TfL’s experts at the Plexal innovation centre and co-working space at the Olympic Park in
London.
Over a period of ten weeks, the companies have access to TfL and its data – as well as utilities, councils and Plexal’s consultants – with the aim of building solutions to help roadworks run more smoothly.
“The context behind this is that barriers to entry have reduced because of emerging technology – whether it’s data or sensors,” said Rikesh Shah, head of commercial innovation at TfL. “That means more innovators from the market can help solve citywide challenges... Whether you’re big or small, you have equal access to this competition.”
The programme is run via £350,000 in funding from TfL’s Lane Rental Scheme (TLRS), under which it charges utility companies for access to TfL’s roads; this encourages them to work in less disruptive ways, such as at night, to help keep roads clear. The scheme has already funded innovations including digital maps, sensor-monitored traffic signals and a robot that runs through gas pipes to fix joints without ripping up roads.
RoadLab looked for projects that ensured safety on roadwork projects, for contractors and the public, while ensuring transport and roads remain accessible, all with an eye to making use of smart, connected technologies. While this particular programme is focused on London and its challenges, the hope is that the solutions can be used in other cities around the UK. “Other cities quite
“The context behind this is that barriers to entry have reduced because of emerging tech – whether it’s data or sensors”
often have similar challenges to what we have,” said Shah.
Not all of the companies will necessarily win funding or land contracts with TfL, but they all highlight the future of roadworks in smart cities. We’re talking projects that model the impact of construction vehicles to avoid causing traffic delays, scan roads to spot where maintenance is needed before potholes form, and analyse social media to look for complaints and ideas that may otherwise be missed. There are even barriers that know when they’re being moved.
Fast track
Entrants to the programme were told what problems need solving, rather than what technology to develop. “It’s outcome-led – we’re not being prescriptive with the solutions we’re looking for,” said Shah.
Working with large organisations such as TfL isn’t always easy for small companies; they lack access and funds, leading to fears that they won’t be able to deliver as promised, while startups have different styles of working than established brands. “What I’ve seen quite a lot of over the last few years are some great proof of concepts, but we struggle with scaling,” said Shah. To address this, the RoadLab programme isn’t a typical startup accelerator, which normally help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to market by offering mentorship and office space. Instead, it embeds procurement teams from TfL and local councils, meaning they can work with companies to find a route to market. “Because it is a procurement process, that means we can actually apply their solutions across London,” said Shah.
That may not sound very exciting, but it’s the core idea that makes RoadLab different. “I think it’s really hard to prepare for innovation, because typically you have a set of requirements and you do what is safe – that’s the definition of procurement,” said Kevin Lee, co-founder of one of the programme’s member companies, Mobilized Construction. “It’s really cool to have that tie-in [with procurement]... they’re willing to experiment.”
Another important benefit to the programme is having access to TfL’s experts, as well as partners at utilities and local councils. “They have been able to round up many different stakeholders – and they say this would not normally take two to three weeks but two to three months,” said Lee, who spent hours in a depot installing his company’s sensors onto cars. “That ground interaction with the bus drivers and the depot manager, that’s stuff that you wouldn’t normally get access to.”
Some of the efforts are spurred by TfL opening up its own data, which Shah says helps innovators build apps and tools that help everyone in London. “42% of Londoners use an app powered by TfL data,” he said. “We have over 700 apps and a community of 15,000 developers. And all of these developers are helping to solve some of our problems, whether they’re large tech companies or individuals playing with our data.” By letting the data flow, hopefully traffic will keep on the move, too.
The nine companies making London’s roadworks run more smoothly
Information sharing Social Asset Management (SAM) Frustrated by roadworks? Turn to Twitter to vent? SAM will hear you. This global monitoring tool scours social media for information, analysing it so authorities such as Transport for London can react. “SAM leverages social media data with artificial intelligence,” said Louise Tierney, director of data. “So for TfL it’s for roadwork events, but for other clients it’s bigger things like evacuations or bomb scares.”
Seemingly small changes can have a huge impact on accessibility, Tierney noted, so SAM is looking for information about how, for example, changes to pavements for roadworks can interrupt the journey of someone
“It’s not just if someone tweets at TfL to tell them something is wrong, but it’s all the other posts that are lost on the internet”
Geve
who is in a wheelchair or a blind person. Rather than report it to TfL, they may well turn to social media to discuss it. “It’s not just if someone tweets at TfL to tell them something is wrong, but it’s all the other posts that are just lost on the internet,” she said. We’re all used to WhatsApp and Slack and the host of other communication apps available for planning our social and work lives, but contractors and road workers need something better. Geve is a communications app that brings in maps and visualisation tools to make it easier for workers to share information across organisations. “It connects TfL staff to the utilities and stakeholders to collaborate on current and future roadworks,” explained James McGee, senior analyst at Geve. That’s important for safety: plenty of close calls are spotted before a problem develops, and Geve hopes to help those near misses be communicated more widely among contractors to avoid injuries. “We all do it – we walk past close calls, we pass tripping hazards. And yet there doesn’t seem to be a mechanism of
“We do this using plug-and-play sensors that we develop ourselves – plug them into a bus and they just work”
getting that message across,” continued McGee.
Grid Smarter Cities (Kerb)
Roadworks and construction need supplies, and those are delivered via freight vehicles – which often can’t find places to stop and park near sites. That leads to them circling streets or parking illegally, said Julian Wrigley, chief information officer at Grid. That delays works and adds to congestion.
To help, the Grid Smarter Cities traffic management system, called Kerb, tracks virtual holding bays near works sites, so freight drivers know where to park. “We’ve identified sections of the kerbside where they have lifted restrictions and allow someone to park close to a construction site, rather than driving around,” Wrigley said. “It lets TfL actually sell kerbside space to commercial actors like delivery drivers, service companies and, in this case, construction vehicles.”
TfL’s next top model(ling and simulation)
Emu Analytics
Emu builds data visualisation tools for smart cities. For this project, the company is making a public-facing tool for pedestrians, bus users, cyclists and disabled travellers to show how their journeys will be affected by planned roadworks. “We’ve brought in lots of interesting datasets such as dropped kerbs, so we can start to introduce things like route planning for wheelchair users to understand the best route they can take [when previous ones are closed],” said Richard Vilton, CEO. “Similarly, we can show closed bus stops.” The existing product is a standalone website, but with APIs it could be pulled into an app, he notes.
Immense Simulations
We all know that traffic gets worse when works clog up lanes and close roads, but it’s useful for city authorities to understand exactly what to expect to help avoid the worst congestion. Immense is a “simulation-as-a-service” platform that lets authorities easily model streets, traffic flow and the impact of closures – before traffic starts to pile up. “We’re configuring our simulation engine to look at Borough in London to look at the impact of roadworks on congestion and flow in the network,” said Jof Ruxton, head of infrastructure solutions at Immense Simulations. “This is a tool that can help decision makers who would typically use software tools to be able to run cloud simulations.”
IoT for smarter roadworks
Mobilized Construction
Collecting road data is time consuming – but the Internet of Things could help. “We put sensors onto any vehicle,” said Kevin Lee, co-founder of Mobilized Construction. Right now, the project is working with Dial-a-Ride, the taxi service for people with accessibility challenges. “They drive everywhere around London, so our sensors hitch a ride with them to collect data on road quality and road health and potholes.” So far, the company’s sensors are on 45 vehicles and have covered 10% of London’s roads.
Route Reports
Similar to Mobilized, Route Reports uses sensors fitted to buses to collect data on road quality and potholes, with the information analysed and visualised by an AI platform. “Our pilot with RoadLab is focused on road condition as well as environmental variables like air quality,” said Mauro Cozzi, chief operating officer. “We do this using plug-andplay sensors that we develop ourselves – plug them into a bus and they just work. And then we have some really hardcore analytics on the back end.”
Oxford Plastic
Inevitably, people move barriers and fencing falls over. That’s a problem when the site being secured contains dangers such as uneven ground, holes to pipes below and other hazards. Oxford Plastics’ system features cameras and sensors to monitor the perimeters of sites, so contractors will always be the first to know if there’s an issue with barriers, fencing, temporary walkways and traffic cones or trench covers.
RSK Environment
This consultancy proves that the RoadLab project isn’t all about startups. RSK has engineers across a wide range of specialisms, including utilities and transport. For this programme, RSK’s pitch is to use ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to look for water leaks and then to collect the necessary data to fix them. It’s a serious challenge along the Thames, with 1,500 leaks every week, but a fifth of the holes dug to find the source of the problem come up empty. “Currently GPR is widely used in geophysical surveys… to support street works,” explained innovation lead and RSK principal geophysicist, Matt Stringfellow, in a statement.
“However, the survey data is only used to detect the location of buried infrastructure. The potential application in leak detection has not been addressed and would be a major innovation.”