Euro-Regional Projects: STREETWISE and CENTRICO

Europe

Project outline

Management of the Euro Regional project STREETWISE to develop seamless Intelligent Transport Services. Also managing the national aspects of CENTRICO, linking to partners in mainland Europe to deploy Intelligent Transport Systems and Services on Europe's busiest roads.

Contract value

£1m

Key features

• Developing a partnership of road operators
• New technology for traffic monitoring such as floating vehicle data
• Developing seamless ITS services
• Joining up UK and ROI developments with other European services
• Cross channel information services
• Best Practice in data exchange between traffic centres, active traffic management and evaluation

Skills utilised

• Intelligent Transport Systems
• Freight Management

Project detail

STREETWISE and CENTRICO are both projects forming part of the European Commission's TEMPO programme for Intelligent Transport Systems deployment across the Trans European Route Network (TERN).

The STREETWISE partners are the DfT, its Highways Agency and the strategic roads authorities for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The National Roads Authority for the Republic of Ireland is a full partner. CENTRICO partners are the roads authorities of Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium, together with the Highways Agency representing England.

ITS must have a pan-European dimension because:

• Increasing trade in Europe means more cross-border travel and hence the need to inform and assist a wider variety of customers
• Vehicle makers, service providers and telecommunications firms are pan-European in procurement and service developments
• Great Britain provides the key land bridge for freight between Ireland and mainland Europe
• It helps deliver transport policy cost effectively and quickly

The STREETWISE and CENTRICO area depends on the performance of the TERN to sustain its economy and to provide movement of people and goods. Our strategy is therefore to join up ITS already developed or being deployed by the partners, to provide seamless services that are consistent across Europe. This will provide improvements to the TERN over and above national initiatives, STREETWISE also helps develop new seamless ways of working through closer organisational and institutional partnerships.

This means that we have been involved in the management and development of key UK developments in ITS, such as the TCC project, ATM, Regional Control Centres and ramp metering as well as our continued support to NADICS in Scotland. We have developed new techniques such as floating vehicle data for network monitoring. The project also addresses improved traffic management, data exchange and improved services for travellers, especially in the freight sector.

Ensuring benefits are obtained from ITS is an important issue. Hence STREETWISE leads work in the evaluation of benefits from deployment, to ensure that best practice is disseminated and that benefits from new developments are widely understood.

This work started in 2001 and the UK will receive around £6m of funding from the EC. We are making sure that the funding is also used to develop the seamless ITS services, gluing these national initiatives together. A particular success story here is the cross channel information services project, improving information for freight and travellers in both England and France (http://www.crosschannelinfo.org).

For more information and live traffic information, see http://www.streetwise-info.org and http://www.centrico.net. Also take a look at http://www.its-assist.org.uk and http://www.nadics.org.uk.

For more information, please contact Steve Tarry.