UK Smart Mobility Lab wins ITS (UK) award

The UK Smart Mobility Lab in Greenwich has been presented with an award by Intelligent Systems (UK).

The lab has been set up by TRL to provide a real world test bed for testing connected and automated vehicle technologies. It has been created with the support of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, CCAV, Innovate UK and DfT.

Key partners include RSA, Direct Line, Telefonica, Shell, Sony, Jaguar Land Rover and Oxbotica.

ITS (UK) is a not-for-profit public/private sector association that provides a forum for all organisations concerned with ITS. Its membership of around 150 UK organisations comprises government departments, local authorities, consultants, contractors, manufacturing and service companies, and academic and research institutions.

The awards were presented by at the ITS United Kingdom President’s Dinner in the City of London on 20 July. The four awards presented were:

• The Forward Thinking Award – The Smart Mobility Living Lab in Greenwich. 
• Scheme/Product of the Year award – Cubic Transportation’s NextAgent
• The Young Professional of the Year award went to Nathan Watt, Atkins
• The Rees Hills Award - Andy Graham of White Willow Consulting.

The ITS (UK) awards are open to any organisation or individual with a UK business office. Entries were judged by an eminent panel of ITS professionals chaired by ITS (UK) president and former transport minister Steven Norris. The jury comprised: Professor Anil Namdeo, Newcastle University; Lucy Wickham, Mouchel; Neal Skelton, ITS (UK); Paul Hutton, Smart Highways Magazine; Wayne Stant, Clearview Traffic; and Steve Gooding, RAC Foundation. 

ITS (UK) Award winners 2016

 

Forward Thinking Award – Smart Mobility Living Lab in Greenwich

The UK Smart Mobility Living Lab has been created by TRL to provide a real world test environment for the accelerated testing and development of intelligent, connected and automated transport technologies.

Rather than focus on specific projects, the UK Smart Mobility Living Lab provides a framework via which vehicle manufacturers, technology providers and organisations from associated industries can participate and form consortia to achieve their own objectives with the support of TRL and the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

The lab unifies three Innovate UK projects (GATEway, MOVE_UK and Atlas) under one umbrella.

It enables testing in complex urban environments with a range of multimodal transport options to enable investigations into how mobility can be optimised for a range of population demographics, going beyond the relatively sterile testing environments provided by traditional off street facilities.

The location of the UK Smart Mobility Living Lab in the heart of London and close to the centres of finance, insurance, politics and media also mean that it is easily accessible by key stakeholders.

The jury said: “We believe that the UK Smart Mobility Living Lab represents a forward thinking, innovative and unique UK asset that will enable the development of ITS to be accelerated within the UK and with global relevance.”

 

Scheme/Product of the Year – NextAgent video ticket agent at Stansted Airport

Cubic Transportation Systems has created NextAgent, which is a virtual walk-up ticket office, ticket vending machine and a video-linked call centre. A trial is underway at Stansted Airport in partnership with train operating company Abellio Group. Since the introduction of NextAgent in October 2015, NextAgent has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from users, citing the ease of use and a secure and service-oriented customer experience. Some 91% of users said they would use NextAgent again because of this. A third of respondents claimed NextAgent would increase their likelihood of using train from Stansted airport for their onward journeys, which undoubtedly would help ease road congestion.

NextAgent’s operation is enabled by a video technology based on Cisco unified call manager which runs over a 2MB broadband line. It is based on a standard rail ticketing system and therefore it links to the RSP settlement for accounting purposes.

NextAgent provides the ability to answer questions both relating to tickets but also for general information about the airport and onwards travel. The device can display Tube maps, journey routes, hotel locations and more, all of which can be shared at the touch of a button. The agents are multi-lingual providing reassurance to customers for whom English may not be their native language.

The jurys said: “Using technological innovation, NextAgent enables cost reductions to be reaped by operators using remote agents to answer multiple calls from different locations as well as providing an unheard of level of customer experience.”

 

Young ITS Professional of the Year - Nathan Watt, Atkins

Nathan Watts joined Atkins two years ago after graduating from university. He has contributed to the ITS world through attendance at conferences, joining interest groups and writing an article for ITS UK on the future of ITS detection. This has led to one of a projects for Kent County Council investigating detection on the road network and how industry can move away from the constraints of traditional methods of detection.

Watts has used his experience to share knowledge of detection, and specifically of floating vehicle data, within Atkins and its clients.

This year, he has been involved with developing a new generation of ramp metering for Highways England. He presented findings from the business case, hosted an industry day for leading ramp metering suppliers and contributed to the new specification.

The Highways England client said: “Nathan has shown great maturity in delivering a challenging and innovative stream of work. 2nd generation ramp metering has the potential to be a powerful new traffic management technique and Nathan has been at the forefront of defining how 2G Ramp Metering will work. A worthy nominee.”

The jury said: “Not only has Nathan developed good technical skills, but he has developed strong relationships and people skills during his time working within the ITS industry. He regularly supports other staff, offering insight as well as helping newer staff learn about ITS and encouraging work experience students.”

 

Neville Rees and Peter Hills Award for outstanding personal contribution - Andy Graham, White Willow Consulting

Andy Graham started his career almost 30 years ago with Wootton Jeffreys before joining TPA (now AECOM) where he was director of ITS before starting White Willow Consulting some 10 years ago. His career has included working on motorway control, NADICS in Scotland, England’s Regional and national centres and TfL’s Freeflow project. His primary passion is connecting vehicles, people and infrastructure. ITS-UK says his leadership led to over 6 million TMC sat navs in the UK, wide use of floating vehicle data and work on the future of connected vehicles.

His work for DfT includes removing HGV blind spots and working with CCAV. He has also worked with many local authorities too on real world ITS deployment

He recently helped deploy free flow charging at Dartford and in Canada, and has worked on road charging schemes in Australia, South Africa, Ireland and Bulgaria through to the US. He has also worked in New Zealand, Denmark and France. He is a great salesman for the UK as his many foreign clients will attest. He helped lead the STREETWISE and CENTRICO projects and has been an auditor for the European Commission

Graham founded and, until recently, chaired the ITS-UK Connected Vehicles group. He has assisted ITS UK to shape the ITS Directive and by appearing before the Transport Select Committee.

The jury said: “Andy is an influential “ideas machine” in many areas of ITS as well as a man who makes things happen practically. Perhaps the biggest contribution he makes is in bringing new people into ITS and sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm with them. Allied to his technical and business contribution, this makes him a worthy recipient of the award.”