Technology

Road-user charging – the answer to everything or nothing? – Ben Plowden and Rich Sallnow, PA Consulting
The funding and decarbonisation of road transport in the UK continues to be a hot topic. The Treasury anticipates a £35 billion hole in the budget owing to lower fuel duty and vehicle excise duty (VED) as the fleet electrifies. But vehicle electrification alone will...

Doing things differently with technology and innovation – Keith Smith, Chevron Group
Keith Smith, Chief Engineer for the Chevron Group explains how innovative thinking, digital technology and industry collaboration has resulted in a new way of managing Mobile Carriageway Closures. We have to change the way we think about roadworks if we want to change...

Covid, the economy, and the Roads Policy Trilemma – Michael Whelan, M6Toll
Michael Whelan, General Manager at M6Toll looks at RUC trials in California, Utah and Washington state, and explains how lessons learnt could be applied in the UK The arrival of the Covid19 pandemic in the UK changed everything overnight, not least on our roads. The...

How to make the best choices for sustainable transport – Alex Walton, Arcadis
Alex Walton, Director and Product Owner at Arcadis, explains how we can optimise our transport strategies and make data driven decisions. Transport planners love optimization. We are great at tinkering with signal timings and converging strategic models. But we...

Making connections happen – Duncan Reed and Stuart Campbell, Trimble
Trimble’s Duncan Reed, Business Development Manager, and Stuart Campbell, Head of Sales and Business Development, explores the value of connected technology for civil infrastructure, ahead of Highways UK 2022 Our nation’s civil infrastructure is a critical part of the...

Getting the strategic road network ready for autonomous vehicles calls for collaboration – Joanna White, National Highways
Joanna White, Roads Development Director at National Highways, outlines the importance of collaboration and information sharing to successfully implement connected services. Vehicles are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, designed to keep us safer and make our...

The future of mobility is safer (and how we get there) – Jillian Kowalchuk, Safe and the City
Jillian Kowalchuk, Founder of Safe and the City explains how software and AI can help people feel safer when using the transport network Most people think of Safe & the City as just an app, but that isn’t the full picture. There’s more behind our technologies,...

Technology for a Better Journey – Kristof Harling, TAKELEAP
Kristof Harling, Executive Director at TAKELEAP, outlines the benefits of digital technology within road maintenance. The Department for Transport (DfT) has recognised the need to adopt new technology and AI driven data analytics to successfully deliver the UK's...

Hitting the bridge deck running as the new kid on the National Highways block – Rob Cook, Winvic
Rob Cook, Civils & Infrastructure Director at Winvic, talks about their delivery strategy and projects ahead of exhibiting at Highways UK this year. Since I was appointed by Winvic in the brand-new role of Director for Civils and Infrastructure, it has been a...

Could 5G connectivity be the changemaker technology for road safety? – Dr Dimitrios Kaltakis, WSP
Dr Dimitrios Kaltakis, 5G and connectivity lead at WSP, outlines how network operators, vehicle manufacturers, and road operators must work together to achieve Vision Zero. As digital connectivity becomes increasingly vital – not just for the smooth but for the safe...

Investing in digitisation offers great added value – Thomas Leopoldseder, Q Point
Thomas Leopoldseder, CEO of Q Point, unpacks the potential of digital solutions within the road construction process. Through the digitalization of business processes, internally or together with business partners, decisive competitive advantages can be achieved -...

Do standards stifle innovation? – Andy Fish, 3M
Andy Fish, technical specialist for 3M's Transportation Safety Division, looks at how to encourage innovation in a regulated market. As someone who has sat on many standard setting committees and industry bodies, across several industries, I have often pondered why...

Inclusive Infrastructure Solutions – Mathew Haslam, Hardscapes
Mathew Haslam, managing director at Hardscape outlines their extensive product range with the UK’s largest selection of Connectivity Solutions Products. Proudly independent and with over 25 years of expertise in pushing the boundaries of hard landscaping, Hardscape is...

Attracting new labour into highways – Ben Rawding, JCB
Ben Rawding from JCB stresses the importance of new technologies to tackle the labour shortages and attract new talent to the sector. Today the highways teams within British local authorities face a number of challenges, and as an industry we must do more to support...

Could innovations in wireless communications be the key to better roadworker safety? – dBD Communications
Brooke Wood from dDB Communications emphasises the need for investment in wireless communications to improve roadworker safety. Every day and night, over 3,000 highways engineers work across the UK’s 670-mile network of motorways and A-roads to keep our roads safe and...

How mobility hubs and shared transport can play a key role in the UK’s journey to net zero – Richard Dilks, CoMoUK
Richard Dilks, Chief Executive at CoMoUK, explains how mobility hubs and shared transport schemes can play a significant role in the UK’s journey to Net Zero by cutting congestion and carbon emissions while improving air quality and the nation’s health. At...

“Bringing the environment into the picture” – How local authorities can add a new dimension to highways asset management – Andy Peart, Yotta
Andy Peart outlines how local authorities can utilise tech and data to inform their highways asset management decisions and bring in a new environmental dimension. The science of strategic highways asset management is going through seismic change. Historically,...

Smart cities need smart highways and roads
Transport is one of the main contributors to carbon emissions in London and to meet the Mayor’s ambitious target to make the capital a net zero city by 2030 we will need to dramatically increase smart and electric transport alternatives – and not just electric cars!...

How vehicle sensor data is underpinning a revolution in road safety
Steve Birdsall, CEO of Gaist, provider of roadscape insight and intelligence services, explains the very real possibility of a revolution in road safety In the past decade, the role of data within the built environment has changed dramatically. An explosion in the...

Using AI to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on our Highways
Author: Peter Mildon - COO and Co-Founder, Vivacity Labs Peter Mildon, COO and Co-Founder of Vivacity Labs, has been reviewing data from Vivacity’s national network of AI-based video road sensors to assess the impact of Covid-19 on our highways networks on a daily...