Skip to main content

New consortium leads smart city initiative for Exeter

Exeter City Council and Devon County Council, working with a consortium led by IT services provider NTT Data, have unveiled a ground-breaking, two-year intelligent transport project for the area. Through the project, the group aims to identify solutions that will alleviate traffic congestion in and around Exeter, an historic city in the county of Devon, in south-west England. NTT Data will lead the consortium of traffic experts and specialist providers including Imtech Traffic & Infra, Vaisala, the Unive
December 10, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Exeter City Council and Devon County Council, working with a consortium led by IT services provider NTT Data, have unveiled a ground-breaking, two-year intelligent transport project for the area. Through the project, the group aims to identify solutions that will alleviate traffic congestion in and around Exeter, an historic city in the county of Devon, in south-west England.

NTT Data will lead the consortium of traffic experts and specialist providers including 6999 Imtech Traffic & Infra, 144 Vaisala, the University of Exeter and big data specialist Black Swan.

The Engaged Smart Transport project will use real-time traffic and weather sensor data, combined with other data sources such as eyewitness and behavioural information to better understand the factors affecting people’s travel behaviour. It will reveal where and why congestion happens and identify solutions to address these problems. The consortium has been awarded match funding by Innovate, the UK Government’s innovation agency.

Exeter is setting out a growth plan for the city that will deliver 12,000 new homes, 60 hectares of new business land and 40,000 square metres of new retail space by 2026. Increased population and commuter movement will add to pressures on infrastructure and public transport services. Exeter has a central population of 120,000 that already experiences daily congestion as well as one-off spikes caused by events.

The consortium believes that understanding how existing road capacity can be managed more effectively is critical for Exeter to deliver this growth. Taking an innovative approach to the use of existing and new data from a range of sources such as sensor technology, social media feedback and the latest traffic algorithm technology, the Engaged Smart Transport project will deliver insight into population movement and provide answers to real-world traffic issues.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Xerox takes youthful view of future transport
    August 23, 2016
    Xerox’s David Cummins talks to Colin Sowman about the lessons for city authorities from its survey of younger peoples’ attitude to transport. There can be no better way to get a handle on the future of transport demand than to ask the younger generation about how they view and consume today’s transport. Sociologists have called this group Generation Z – those born between 1995 and 2007 – which will make up 40% of all US consumers by 2020.
  • Smarter transport remains key to smart cities
    January 9, 2018
    Colin Sowman looks at some of the challenges and solutions that will provide enhanced transport efficiency in tomorrow’s smarter cities. However you define a ‘smart city’, one of the key ingredients will be an efficient transport system. As most governments and city authorities face financial constraints, incremental improvements in the existing systems is the most likely way forward. In London, new trains and signalling are improving the capacity of the Underground but that then reveals previously
  • IBM helping to transform Zhenjiang's transport system
    March 22, 2012
    IBM and the City of Zhenjiang, China, have announced that IBM is helping to transform the city's public transportation system. Zhenjiang will use hardware, software, services and technologies from the company’s research labs, all brought together through the IBM intelligent operations centre (IOC) for smarter cities, a solution that will serve as the central point of command for the city.
  • Sensor-based car parking, foldable container honoured at IRF awards
    May 19, 2014
    Xerox and Holland Container Innovations (HCI) are the joint winners of the 2014 Promising Innovation in Transport Award, awarded by the International Transport Forum at the OECD, an intergovernmental organisation for the transport sector with 54 member countries. Xerox receives the award for its Merge system, a city-wide sensor-based, smart parking solution that reduces traffic and congestion through guided parking with demand-based pricing. HCI receives the award for their 4FOLD ISO-certified foldabl