Skip to main content

iPhone app for citizens to report highway defects

People in the UK county of Buckinghamshire can now use an Apple iPhone to photograph and report a pothole, loose paving, broken bollard or faulty street light. Developed by Masternaut for Transport for Buckinghamshire (TfB), the app captures a digital image of the defect with its geolocation and transmits it back to highway maintenance teams. This gives highways managers important information direct from the scene, which helps with managing response levels and providing better service. "Using this app, i
April 19, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
People in the UK county of Buckinghamshire can now use an 493 Apple iPhone to photograph and report a pothole, loose paving, broken bollard or faulty street light. Developed by 748 Masternaut for 1880 Transport for Buckinghamshire (TfB), the app captures a digital image of the defect with its geolocation and transmits it back to highway maintenance teams. This gives highways managers important information direct from the scene, which helps with managing response levels and providing better service.

"Using this app, iPhones provide much more detailed information than a standard telephone call or email. Buckinghamshire residents who have these smartphones are our eyes on the street. They help us to review the nature of the problem and see its location. We would normally have to visit the scene to get this level of intelligence before deciding on a course of action," says Marc Evans, ICT Systems Manager.

Transport for Buckinghamshire is a partnership between Buckinghamshire County Council and highway infrastructure services provider 4931 Ringway Jacobs. The app augments the TfB award winning online Service Information Centre, a special website that incorporates live data feeds from Masternaut's real-time vehicle tracking and mobile service management software

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • The search for travel management's Holy Grail
    October 10, 2018
    Combining accurate network estimates and forecasts with real-time information is the way to deal with traffic hot spots. Alan Dron looks at products which aim to achieve just that. Traffic management authorities have for years been trying to get ahead of the game. Instead of reacting to situations, they want to be able to head them off as they occur – or even before they happen. Finding that Holy Grail of successfully anticipating problems will save time, tension and tempers on city streets. Two new system
  • Smart technology keeps infrastructure operating safely
    August 30, 2013
    US Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are using smart technology to warn civil engineers when something is wrong with the infrastructure, says the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Association (AASHTO). Sensors installed on bridges, in roadways, and on maintenance vehicles are communicating real-time performance and weather data, allowing engineers to solve problems before they occur. "Most people look at a road or a bridge and never realise the technology that today's modern tra
  • Preparing for unpredictable precipitation
    August 18, 2015
    ITS solutions are helping streamline winter road maintenance for Delaware and Illinois, two states that must deal with dynamic weather and varying snowfall totals. Andrew Bardin Williams reports. Wilmington and Newark (pronounced new-ark) are two vastly different cities that sit on opposite ends of Delaware. Newark is a sleepy university town of roughly 30,000 residents abutting the state’s western border with Maryland and Pennsylvania, and often gets confused with its larger namesake in New Jersey.
  • Legalities of in-vehicle systems and cooperative infrastructures
    February 1, 2012
    Paul Laurenza of Dykema Gossett PLLC discusses the paths which lawmakers may go down on the route to making in-vehicle systems and cooperative infrastructures a reality. The question of whether or not to mandate in-vehicle systems for safety and other applications is a vexed one. There is a presumption on some parts that going down the road of forcing systems' fitment is somehow too domineering or restricting. Others would argue that it is the only realistic way of ensuring that systems achieve widespread d