TfL inks £6.5m deal with Sopra Steria to build traffic data-munching and control system

Transport for London (TfL) has signed a £6.5m deal for a new control system with outsourcer Sopra Steria. The local government body, in charge of transport in Greater London, handed the contract to Sopra to develop software to crunch a chunkier volume of congestion and road danger information. The new control centre system is …

[Primus Secundus Tertius]

AI Traffic lights

AI is arguably more intelligent than some of the drivers on the road; but it must certainly be more intelligent than most of the traffic light systems that I seem to meet.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: AI Traffic lights

Traffic lights on roundabouts are the ones that are especially brain-dead. There are quite a lot round my way, and every time I've seen them out of action the traffic flows much more smoothly and with shorter queues.

[Richard Jones 1]

Re: AI Traffic lights

I gave you an upvote, though how anything as dumb as the traffic lights could have the smarts to change the damned lights to red every time on approaching them, wherever I go, I will never understand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: AI Traffic lights

I heartily agree. Some traffic planner thinks it's a good idea to stop the free flow of traffic at every opportunity. In what way does stopping traffic at crossings at every opportunity help the economy? Why do lights at motorway junctions require stops at two or three lights just to exit or access a slip road? This can only be increasing pollution and journey times. It must be more efficient to allow a long stream of traffic through in turns than to have a slow clockwork like rotation of traffic with multiple stop starts which fails to adapt to loads. Instead of encouraging a smooth driving style this encourages people to race away to try to beat the next light. If AI could learn it should adapt to the condition where no lights are in action and the flow is only slowed when heavy traffic requires it. Far better to limit the speed on a roundabout to 15 or 20mph by installing speed cameras and removing the traffic lights.

[$till$kint]

This *is* Steria we're talking about?

Ah, yes it must be.

"TfL will own the system once the work is complete, with no set delivery date for the project"

[MartyGrohl]

Re: This *is* Steria we're talking about?

++ Exactly what I was thinking.

Are you 'Still Skint' because you hired SS per chance? lol

[FozzyBear]

After 2 years and £6 mil

A 845 page report will detail as verbosely as possible that

Less cars on the road should ease congestion and improve travel times.

The other 844.9 pages of the report are simply there to justify the price tag.

[Peter Galbavy]

I was just thinking, in a gentle fume this weekend how more and more London junctions have what I would term a "no go" settings on their lights. I was stopped at at least two junctions where none of the roads or the pedestrian crossings were green, and I even accounted for the change periods you would expect. I assume this is udner the guise of "traffic management" and will be used to justify some change later on having gathered the right kinds of statistics for vehicle or pedestrian movement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no

Well the TfL better settle in for the long haul and kiss goodbye to those £'s. SS has a grand reputation for poor, drawn out delivery and pretty dire maintenance afterwards.

To think, an actual decent consultancy could have delivered something special here.