Skip to main content

UK Government announces funding for Smart Mobility Lab in London

A consortium led by TRL has been awarded £13.4 million ($10.1 million) of the UK government's £51 million ($38 million) Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) testbed funding to create a Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL) in Greenwich and nearby Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, London. The funding is part of the £100 million ($75 million) UK CAV test bed competitive fund and is the first investment by government and industry through Meridian to develop a national CAV testing infrastructure.
October 23, 2017 Read time: 3 mins
A consortium led by 491 TRL has been awarded £13.4 million ($10.1 million) of the UK government's £51 million ($38 million) Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) testbed funding to create a Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL) in Greenwich and nearby Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, London. The funding is part of the £100 million ($75 million) UK CAV test bed competitive fund and is the first investment by government and industry through Meridian to develop a national CAV testing infrastructure.


SMLL will be designed as an environment where innovators in the automotive sector, transport service and technology providers, SMEs, local and central government and research bodies, can exchange ideas and develop technical and business solutions for the future of smart mobility solutions. It will provide a real-world urban test bed that is capable of demonstrating and evaluating the use, performance and benefits of CAV technology and mobility services in an accessible and globally recognisable context.
    
The consortium comprises expertise from across the transport and technology sectors, including TRL, DG Cities, Cisco, Costain, Cubic, Loughborough University, 1466 Transport for London and the London Legacy Development Corporation. Delivery partners include Millbrook Proving Ground and the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre.

Business and energy secretary Greg Clark said: “Combining ambitious new technologies and innovative business models to address social and economic challenges lies at the heart of the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy. Accelerating connected and autonomous vehicle technology development is central to achieving this ambition and will help to ensure the UK is one of the world’s go-to locations to develop this sector.

Councillor Denise Hyland, leader of the royal borough of Greenwich, said: “I am delighted that the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has been chosen as the location for one of the UK test-beds for connected and autonomous vehicles, and will be home to the Smart Mobility Living Lab: London. This important initiative will further consolidate Greenwich, London and the UK’s pre-eminence in the development and application of connected and autonomous vehicle technology. It builds on our success in establishing the Royal Borough of Greenwich as a leader in smart city innovation and our work to identify the opportunities that technologies such as connected and autonomous vehicles can bring, how cities will need to adapt, and our determination to put city authorities at the heart of the innovation debate.”

Related Content

  • August 22, 2016
    Cubic promotes the power of partnerships
    Cubic’s Andy Taylor considers the growing need for partnerships in the transportation sector. At the end of June, The Guardian newspaper in the UK broke a game-changing transport story – Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is working on a project that aims to radically overhaul parking and transportation in American cities.
  • October 26, 2017
    Data collection becoming a crowded market
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
  • July 16, 2021
    Bringing the Internet of Mobility to life
    As we chart our route to the ITS World Congress in Hamburg, a recent Ertico-ITS Europe webinar explored the future of connectivity including policy, infrastructure and security
  • May 8, 2024
    Seyond expands Lidar testing in Peachtree Corners
    Firm will roll out more of its systems for real-world data collection in Georgia city