Councils in North East England receive funding to upgrade traffic management technology.

The UK Government has announced fund valued £3.64 million ($4.79 million) to upgrade the traffic management technology and improve journey times across the North East Combined Authority area (NECA). It will include upgrades to traffic signals on key regional routes with Automatic Number Plate Recognition Cameras, Variable Message Signs and integration with public transport data from Nexus. The Department of Transport paid £2.8 million ($3.6million) of the fund and the rest came from local authority contribu
October 27, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
The UK Government has announced fund valued £3.64 million ($4.79 million) to upgrade the traffic management technology and improve journey times across the North East Combined Authority area (NECA). It will include upgrades to traffic signals on key regional routes with Automatic Number Plate Recognition Cameras, Variable Message Signs and integration with public transport data from 2105 Nexus. The Department of Transport paid £2.8 million ($3.6million) of the fund and the rest came from local authority contributions.


The technology allows the camera to be monitored from the regional Urban Traffic Management Centre (1682 UTMC), allowing officers to adjust signal timings where necessary to improve traffic flow and provide better and reliable journey times to the travelling public.

Newcastle City Council submitted the funding bid on behalf of the North East Combined Authority for the expansion of the UTMC. It was one of 76 successful projects across the country to win a share of £244m ($186 million).

NECA is the seven councils which serve County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland.

Cllr Nick Forbes, Leader of Newcastle City Council and transport lead for the North East Combined Authority, said: “This funding is great news for commuters and business and will help cut journey times across the area. “We have a great facility here in the North East where we work together across the area to monitor the traffic network across local authority boundaries. This new investment means we can connect up traffic signals across key routes so we can smooth our traffic flows where we see congestion building up and adjust traffic signals right across the network to keep traffic moving at peak periods. “Providing reliable journey times and improving connectivity across the region is also a real benefit for our local economy as it helps people to access jobs and training and supports the efficient transport of goods.”

Urban Traffic Control

Related Content

  • 5 million public transport stops mapped by Moovit as community of local editors grows to 200,000
    October 31, 2017
    Moovit has added 5 million public transport stops worldwide to its app and increased the number of local editors, Mooviters, who map out their own transport networks where public data is not readily available, to 200,000. In addition, Japanese has also been added as the 44th language available for the app. These initiatives are aimed at helping to make travel smoother for commuters while building a global repository of transport data that governments, urban planners and businesses can use to better prepare
    Read More
  • Do buses need subsidies in congestion charging areas
    June 20, 2016
    David Crawford takes a look at the debate surrounding bus subsidies. Subsidies for public transport are a well-known and frequently-used policy tool directed at reducing the high environmental and social costs of peak-period traffic congestion. But at the end of last year the Swedish Centre for Transport Studies published a working paper entitled ‘Should buses still be subsidised in Stockholm?’ This concluded that the subsidy levels currently being applied in Stockholm could be nearly halved by setting bus
    Read More
  • Government green lights road and rail improvements
    July 19, 2013
    UK Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has confirmed a £1.2 billion order for more state of-the art trains to transform rail travel on one of Britain’s busiest intercity routes. The 270 carriages will be manufactured in Britain by Hitachi Rail Europe as part of the government’s overall £5.8 billion Intercity Express Programme (IEP). The trains will operate on the East Coast Main Line from 2019 and will deliver significant benefits to passengers, including boosting capacity by 18 per cent, improving trai
    Read More
  • Freeway management system for Sydney's M4 motorway
    August 28, 2012
    In a bid to improve Sydney's roads and congestion, Australia's Federal and New South Wales governments are to jointly fund a project to equip the full length of the state's M4 motorway with technology which will improve traffic flows and ease congestion along this vital part of Sydney's road network. The US$17 million project will provide the M4 with an electronic freeway management system consisting of variable speed limit sign, entry ramp signalling, CCTV, digital traveller information signs, and signs ad
    Read More

Highlighted Content