Skip to main content

ITS Australia supports Melbourne’s world first ‘urban laboratory’

ITS Australia has welcomed the Victorian Government’s announcement of a unique hi-tech transport project for Melbourne. The National Connected Multimodal Transport (NCMT) test bed will develop pilots and facilitate collaborations between government, industry and academia. It will utilise thousands of sensors and wireless units fitted to roads to provide insight into how to manage transport systems and road networks in a more efficient way. The urban laboratory would cover approximately 7 kilometres
January 6, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
858 ITS Australia has welcomed the Victorian Government’s announcement of a unique hi-tech transport project for Melbourne.

The National Connected Multimodal Transport (NCMT) test bed will develop pilots and facilitate collaborations between government, industry and academia. It will utilise thousands of sensors and wireless units fitted to roads to provide insight into how to manage transport systems and road networks in a more efficient way.

The urban laboratory would cover approximately 7 kilometres of roadways in Melbourne.

ITS Australia confirmed its participation in the project by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with test bed leaders, the University of Melbourne, late last year.

The first pilot NCMT test bed is scheduled to be launched in April 2017.

ITS Australia CEO Susan Harris said the test bed and a recent iMOVE CRC submission to the Federal Government show just how seriously Australia takes real-time, data-driven research to find the best possible outcomes.

Professor Iven Mareels, Dean of the Melbourne School of Engineering said a connected community was the key to improved transport options, while founding director of the NCMT test bed and University of Melbourne Professor in Transport for Smart Cities, Majid Sarvi, said the urban laboratory will be a living experiment of connected vehicles and transport networks, people movements and city infrastructure.

Related Content

  • June 11, 2025
    On the Edge with Verizon’s new real-time V2X platform
    Solution allows vehicles to share data with each other, VRUs and infrastructure
  • March 27, 2015
    University of Michigan’s M City to test autonomous driving
    The University of Michigan is creating the Mobility Transformation Center (MTC), in partnership with government and leading tech companies, as a means to test and develop the infrastructure and in-vehicle components to make autonomous vehicles a reality. M City, the nickname for the MTC, is a mock city that allows developers to test a fully autonomous driving experience in a real-world environment. With completion scheduled for July, the 32-acre facility on U of M’s North Campus will include buildings,
  • February 2, 2012
    Pioneering IntelliDrive technologies in Michigan
    Pete Goldin reports on upgrades to the USDOT's Michigan Test Bed, where IntelliDrive technologies are being pioneered
  • November 17, 2014
    New partnership puts Milton Keynes at heart of the smart cities revolution
    Indian IT company Tech Mahindra has joined forces with The Open University (OU) and Milton Keynes Council in leading the charge in the United Kingdom's smart cities revolution, in an agreement which will see the parties work closely together in researching key areas behind smart cities. Smart cities harness the power of big data to improve the running of key services such as energy and transport, making them more reliable and efficient. The new partnership will focus its efforts on: Energy; Transportatio