Skip to main content

DfT to conduct UK road markings health check

The UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded £2 million to develop a national health-check of road markings. The DfT is to analyse nearly 10,000 miles of road with the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) to understand where investment is needed. The council will use Gaist’s machine learning artificial intelligence technology to review close to 150 million high definition images. Stu McInroy, chief executive of the Road Safety Markings Association, believes the study will provide “ha
August 1, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

The UK’s 1837 Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded £2 million to develop a national health-check of road markings.  

The DfT is to analyse nearly 10,000 miles of road with the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) to understand where investment is needed. The council will use Gaist’s machine learning artificial intelligence technology to review close to 150 million high definition images.

Stu McInroy, chief executive of the Road Safety Markings Association, believes the study will provide “hard evidence” of the decline in road markings and the associated increase in road safety risk to the public.

“Government must stand ready to act on the findings of the LCRIG/Gaist study and provide to local authorities sufficient ring-fenced funding to reverse the decline in road markings so evident to the public,” he continues. “There will also be an obligation upon local authorities to make decisions not on the basis of cost, which usually means cheapest, but on obtaining the best value for money solutions for the tax payer.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • New York to pump $51.5bn into transit
    September 25, 2019
    New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has proposed investing $51.5 billion in the city’s subways, buses and railroads over the next five years. Janno Lieber, MTA chief development officer, says: “The proposed capital programme will be truly transformational – more trains, more buses, more service, more accessibility and more reliability.” The 2020-2024 Capital Plan would put $40bn into the city’s subways and buses and $6.1bn for 1,900 new subway cars to help mitigate delays. MTA also wa
  • Aimsun unveils test platform for AVs in digital cities
    August 7, 2019
    Aimsun has released a software platform for the large-scale design and validation of path-planning algorithms for autonomous vehicles (AVs). The company says Aimsun Auto allows test vehicles to drive inside digital cities - virtual copies of transportation networks, where users can safely explore the limits of AV technology. Paolo Rinelli, global head of product management at Aimsun, says Auto removes the need to drive around seeking conditions that users want to test or to “script each actor’s behaviou
  • Substantial savings from smarter street lighting
    February 25, 2015
    As authorities strive to reduce expenditure and carbon emissions, Colin Sowman looks at some of the smart ways of managing street lighting while containing costs and maintaining safety. Street lighting can account for 40% of an authority’s energy consumption. So, faced with the need to reduce outgoings, some authorities are looking for smart ways of managing street lighting or even turning off swathes of street lights in the small hours. Back in 2008 the E-street Initiative report concluded that authorities
  • C-ITS in Europe: jazz or symphony?
    August 18, 2021
    Communication between vehicles on the road is going to be increasingly important. Richard Lax of Kapsch TrafficCom explains why music is a good guide to the way that this could work safely