Our latest survey saw Highways team up with technology company Tracsis to understand the impact of COVID-19 and other recent disruptions on traffic modelling and transport data, and how data might be used and accessed in the future.
The results show the roads sector hopes to invest more in this area to keep up with the fast-changing times, with a strong emphasis on modal shift and safer, less polluted places.
While for some industries the pandemic is already fading into the background for transport planners and traffic modellers its impact is still being felt and there is a clear sense from the latest Highways Asks survey that the industry is already gearing up to tackle the changes. Almost 70% of those surveyed expected to see a moderate or major long-term impact from the disruption of the last few years, with over a quarter expecting the effect to be major.
As a result, close to three-quarters (72.8%) of respondents said they planned to increase their traffic monitoring, and modelling budget.
More than half (52.3%) of the total respondents said they would increase the budget and spend the money differently, with 20.5% saying that while the budget would increase it would largely be spent on the same strategies.
The quality of their data analysis was also an issue, with 86.4% stating their organisation needed ‘to invest in more sophisticated and thorough data analysis’.
A similar number (79.5%) said that their real-time data sets and real-time analysis are ‘not as sophisticated or flexible as we need them to be’ – with almost 40% strongly agreeing. Around 45% felt that pre-pandemic data is now unreliable, with around one in six strongly agreeing.
How organisations handle the traffic data they receive was highlighted as a challenging area. While it is a key focus, with more than half (56.8%) stating they had started to consolidate their data into one or a few easily accessible places, almost three quarters agreed data consolidation was a difficult and expensive process.
In the light of the new traffic landscape, the respondents were given the chance to nominate a few key areas of interest for traffic modelling. A majority (56.8%) said a key issue was ‘understanding how to improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians to encourage modal shift’ and exactly half said it was important to understand ‘how to reduce congestion and emissions by monitoring traffic flow and network capacity’.
The third most nominated key area of interest with 47.7% was ‘understanding the impact of changes to commuting to make services more efficient’. The importance of modal shift was also highlighted by the 81.9% that said their organisation needed ‘to invest in more multi-modal data and multi-modal integration data’ – with more than a third strongly agreeing. The survey of almost 50 senior figures in the sector also found a strong desire for more data in a range of areas.
More than 90% felt that ‘more specific data for specific locations’ was needed while around 80% of respondents said they agreed that more ‘big picture’ data was needed.
Around three quarters of respondents felt their organisation needed to ‘verify the data as quickly as it is produced’ with the remaining quarter disagreeing.
Overall, there was a split between which of the modes of travel were most likely to experience a medium to long-term impact from the changes to travel patterns seen over the last few years.
Interestingly, private car use was felt to be the mode most likely to see an impact (34.1%) followed by buses (31.8%), rail (18.2%) and then cycling and walking (15.9%). While car use seemed to be the first transport mode to bounce back after lockdowns and now regularly clocks up 100% or more of pre-pandemic journeys, these survey results could reflect the emphasis organisations are now putting on modal shift to improve health, reduce congestion and tackle pollution in cities.
Nick Mather, sales director at Tracsis Traffic Data writes
It was great to see a strong response from Highways readers to our survey. We saw some interesting responses from relevant, senior professionals across the board. Our intention was to understand the future landscape of data collection, what our customers wanted to achieve from transport data, and how technology and market advancements could assist modellers and planners with their ever-evolving projects.
The other key element was around budgets. It was a specific question to investigate just what impact the pandemic, potentially Brexit, and the rising cost of living may have had on transport budgets, and how data suppliers may need to adapt.
Whilst it is a concern that most felt the last few years of disruption are likely to have a major or moderate long-term impact, it is really encouraging to see that more than half of the respondents said that despite the constant pressures on finances, budgets will actually be increased. This gives us a clear indication of how valuable data remains to the transport industry, and in fact, how it has potentially increased its value. While 20% said the extra money would be spent in the same way, a significant percentage said they had new strategies and priorities for spending.
So where will this extra money go? It seems active travel is a key area. We have already seen some of this trend ourselves. Tracsis has provided vital support to councils undertaking active travel projects by capturing data to assess the impact of temporary schemes. This is an essential part of evaluating the suitability of their permanent implementation.
We saw a huge percentage of respondents (86.4%) saying they needed to ‘invest in more sophisticated and thorough data analysis’ as well as a similar proportion mentioning the need for real-time data. I think these points combined demonstrate the demand for more, better data, including real-time information, is only increasing.
The survey also revealed trends in how data is stored and accessed. We are seeing these changes in some of the AI sensor projects we have worked on, and also the high volume of requests from customers wanting to upgrade data management tools such as cloud-based platforms to host data and interrogate it in different ways. Modal shift and reducing congestion and emissions were also key areas of interest - no surprises there. Since the recovery from COVID-19 Tracsis has seen considerable interest in these areas.
The phrase ‘new normal’ seems to have settled down into just normal recently, but there is a strong demand to try and understand how travel patterns have shifted, specifically modal shift and the new distribution of the peaks.
In summary, we are pleased to see the positive responses, despite the challenging landscape. It’s clear there is a continued high demand for data and a strong pipeline of progressive projects in the industry . Thank you everyone for your valuable feedback.
