Case Study

York UTMC Demonstrator

Environmental Monitoring Equipment, Photo courtesy York City Council.Tools Involved

  • Common Databases;
  • Adaptive Traffic Signal Control;
  • Parking Management;
  • Environmental Traffic Management;
  • Public Transport Priority.

Site Description

As with the Preston UTMC Demonstrator, the York UTMC Demonstrator was initiated in 2001, and is based on a £6m government research project.

The demonstrator project is the first phase in the implementation of a Traffic Congestion Management System (TCMS) that is to be rolled out over a five-year period to cover the whole city.

Site Problems

York, like many towns and cities, suffers from congestion in its centre and car parks. Better management of the road space is needed to reduce the congestion and minimise pollution in and around the centre.

Scheme Description

The TCMS is an application that collects information on network conditions, air quality, roadworks and incident information and stores it on a common database (CDB). The information is collected from other systems (such as UTC, SATURN); equipment connected directly to the system (e.g. air quality monitors/car park monitors); and from operator inputs. Along with the TCMS information collected it is displayed on York County Council's website.

This information is disseminated to the public in a number of ways, including the use of 28 car park guidance signs. These are situated on radial routes into the city centre, with the outer signs displaying generic information about available spaces (such as 300 spaces with a left arrow), whilst the inner signs direct drivers to specific named car parks.

The system makes extensive use of UTMC communications to enable similar equipment from different suppliers to share communication links (such as digital subscriber lines and routers or GPRS modems and routers) reducing operational costs.

Scheme Objectives

The TCMS aims to:

  • educate users of the choices of transport mode available and preferable routes into the centre;
  • reduce congestion and the resultant pollution; and
  • assist decisions in the operation of bus priority systems.

The project is intended to demonstrate the use of a common UTMC database and communications, and the associated benefits.

Improvements

It is anticipated that the system will deliver:

  • improved network integration and management;
  • improved traffic congestion management in normal and abnormal conditions;
  • enhanced environmental management;
  • improved bus operation; and
  • reduced cost for expansion to other Local Authorities.

Integrating Systems

This project integrates a variety of ITS tools as shown above.

Costs

Capital costs: Estimated at £4m over 5 years
Revenue costs: not available at present

The initial scheme cost £2.155m split into two phases, the first costing £960,000 for basic core systems, the second phase cost £1.195m.

(source: ITS Assist West Midlands Seminar 16th April 2002, What has been achieved to date - York case study, Peter Evely, York City Council )

This cost includes the purchasing of significant ITS kit such as a Common Database, air quality monitors, VMS and car parking monitoring equipment. This also included DfT support for the UTMC development, e.g. data objects, SNMP support (the development of management information bases - MIBs) and communications deployment (including SDSL, WLAN and GPRS).

Benefits

Benefits of the UTMC system are still being assessed. Early results on user acceptance of the Car Park Guidance (Parking Management) tool are shown in the table below. Initial feedback on the early operation of the TCMS system as a whole can be found in this Lessons Learnt document

Actual benefits reported
Impact Assessment Safety Not covered by the evaluation.
Environment Not covered by the evaluation.
Efficiency Not covered by the evaluation.
Accessibility Not covered by the evaluation.
Integration Not covered by the evaluation.
Technical Performance Not covered by the evaluation.
User Acceptance 81% of drivers were aware of signs, of which 67% usually notice the information on them and take action (rising to 82% for first time visitors). 84% of drivers found the information useful, with 92% of those who had followed directional signs rating them as good or very good.

York UTMC Demonstrator benefits table

However initial feedback on the operation of the TCMS system can be found in the following Lessons Learnt document.

No attempt has been made to validate the results reported. Users of the guidance are encouraged to assess the robustness of the results presented and the likely transferability of the case study to their own local environment.

More Information

The following lessons learnt about the York demonstrator were noted at the UTMC 2003 Annual Conference (Julie Hurley):

  • Stabilising the system has taken longer than anticipated, so delaying main system post-implementation evaluation;
  • Political pressure forced the early roll out of certain aspects of the system;
  • Planning for off-site testing is important to ensure equipment functions as expected;
  • It is necessary to build a multi-disciplinary team to ensure effective implementation;
  • UTMC is not just a technical but also an institutional and operational challenge.