Highways England to trial wirelessly connected vehicles and driverless cars

Highways England (HE) is to invest US$213.5 million (£150 million) on new technology, including trials of driverless car technology on motorways. As part of its innovation strategy, HE may introduce a connected corridor, or ‘wi-fi road’, which could see cars and infrastructure wirelessly connected, with drivers receiving news of advanced road closures or congestion warnings. The strategy also includes trialling radar technology on motorways and in tunnels to improve the way breakdowns are detected. A
April 11, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
8101 Highways England (HE) is to invest US$213.5 million (£150 million) on new technology, including trials of driverless car technology on motorways.

As part of its innovation strategy, HE may introduce a connected corridor, or ‘wi-fi road’, which could see cars and infrastructure wirelessly connected, with drivers receiving news of advanced road closures or congestion warnings. The strategy also includes trialling radar technology on motorways and in tunnels to improve the way breakdowns are detected.

As part of the strategy, HE will also join a trial that would see journey information sent wirelessly to specially adapted vehicles on the A2/M2 between London and Kent.

It also plans to ensure that trials are being undertaken for autonomous vehicles on motorways by the end of next year, to start to collect real world data on performance and potential impacts on capacity and operations.

The strategy also includes trialling radar technology on motorways and in tunnels to improve breakdown detection, as well as the possibility of improving the signalling of junctions on motorways to increase traffic flows and the development of ‘expressways’ on A-roads to encourage more free-flowing traffic.

Highways England chief executive Jim O’Sullivan said: “We’re committed to using innovation to benefit the millions of journeys made on England’s Strategic Road Network today and in the future. We will work with our partners in the supply chain, technology specialists and the automotive industry to trial new technologies that will help make journeys on our roads safer, more reliable and better informed.

“This will involve supporting trials of better connected and autonomous vehicles on our motorways by the end of next year, testing radar technology to better detect breakdowns, and trialling fuel price signs on the M5 between Bristol and Exeter.”
Networking & Communication Systems Urban Traffic Control Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Connecting people and mobility
    February 3, 2012
    Stéphane Petti, Business Development Manager - Automotive, at Orange Business Services' International M2M Center, says that the ITS industry can no longer afford to ignore the telecommunications industry's role in connecting people and mobility services. To telephone companies (telcos), the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) sector is nothing new. Worldwide, they have been focusing considerable attention on M2M in all its sub-segments for several years now. It is the migration of M2M from fixed to wireless connectivi
    Read More
  • The benefits of combining enforcement and traffic management
    February 27, 2013
    Jason Barnes considers how combining enforcement equipment with other traffic management technologies might benefit our future – if only the will were really in place to do so. During the ITS World Congress in Vienna in October last year, Navtech Radar and Vysion­ics ITS announced a strategic partnership that would combine the expertise of Navtech in millimetre-wave wide-area surveillance technology with Vysionics’ machine vision-based automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and average speed measurement
    Read More
  • Mcity test centre for connected and driverless vehicles now open
    July 21, 2015
    The University of Michigan has opened Mcity, the world's first controlled environment specifically designed to test the potential of connected and automated vehicle technologies that will lead the way to mass-market driverless cars. Mcity was designed and developed by U-M's interdisciplinary MTC, in partnership with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). The 32-acre simulated urban and suburban environment includes a network of roads with intersections, traffic signs and signals, streetligh
    Read More
  • Hard shoulder running aids uniform traffic flow and safer driving
    January 23, 2012
    David Crawford detects a market for European experience. Well-established now in at least three European countries, Hard Shoulder Running (HSR) on motorways is exciting growing interest in the US. A November 2010 Report to Congress by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), on the Efficient Use of Highway Capacity, notes the role of HSR in the European-style Active Traffic Management (ATM) strategies now being recommended for implementation in the US where, until recently, they were virtually unknown.
    Read More

Highlighted Content