Skip to main content

EarthSense clears traffic from pollution hotspots

EarthSense is working in the UK with Coventry City Council to divert traffic away from heavily congested roads and pollution hotspots. EarthSense’s air quality sensors are located in areas of the city where levels of nitrogen dioxide have been identified as high; particularly along the A4600 route at Walsgrave Road – a major link in and out of Coventry. When pollution levels are breached, the sensors send alerts to the urban traffic management centre where they trigger messaging on variable message s
August 2, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

8834 EarthSense is working in the UK with Coventry City Council to divert traffic away from heavily congested roads and pollution hotspots.

EarthSense’s air quality sensors are located in areas of the city where levels of nitrogen dioxide have been identified as high; particularly along the A4600 route at Walsgrave Road – a major link in and out of Coventry.

When pollution levels are breached, the sensors send alerts to the urban traffic management centre where they trigger messaging on variable message signs (VMS) which inform motorists and suggest alternative routes.

Shamala Evans, senior project manager at the council, says: “We’re taking early measures with the aim of encouraging motorists to make small changes to help reduce the pollution levels and traffic congestion before it’s too late and we’re forced to introduce chargeable clean air zones.”

Once the pollution levels have reached acceptable standards, the alerts are deactivated, and the VMS is removed.

John Seddon, the council’s head of transport & innovation, says: “The city council is keen to install the right technology across Coventry’s road network to allow us to dynamically manage traffic and respond to issues such as poor air quality or traffic incidents as soon as they happen.”

Related Content

  • August 30, 2019
    Axis gets on board
    Vision technology provider Axis Communications has set up a camera system for ATrain, which owns and operates rail services – including seven trains and one workshop - between Stockholm and Arlanda Airport. The Arlanda Express trains run on one of the few privately-operated railroad lines in Sweden. The company decided in 2015 to install a camera solution at train stations and depots to monitor flows of travellers, checking signs, elevators and escalators and making sure that the ticket machines are wor
  • October 28, 2019
    C/AVs could mean cheaper roads
    The safety benefits of C/AVs have long been promoted – but research suggests they should also contribute to cheaper roads. David Crawford investigates the potential benefits in infrastructure costs Building narrower freeway lanes to accommodate the enhanced route-tracking capabilities of connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs), running in platoon conditions, could result in cost savings of £0.5 million (€0.56 million or US$6.5 million) for every km of road length built. Such benefits could be secur
  • September 13, 2019
    NACTO releases ‘blueprint’ for AVs in cities
    Autonomous vehicles (AVs) must be part of future transport policies which prioritise efficiency and fairness, according to senior transport executives in the US and Canada. The second edition of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)’s Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism sets out what it calls “the concrete steps that will need to be taken to ensure an equitable, people-first city”. NACTO is a collection of 81 North American cities and transit agencies which exchange ideas and coo
  • November 23, 2018
    Cubic: predictive analytics is putting fortune tellers out of business
    The rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence means that fortune tellers will soon be out of business. Ed Chavis takes a behind the scenes look at the world of predictive analytics ver since organisations started taking advantage of insights derived from Big Data, data scientists concentrated their efforts on the ability to make correct assumptions about the future. A few years later, with the help of automation, developments in machine learning (ML) and advancements in the application of a