This week we have a guest post from Rikesh Shah and Daniel Gosselin from our Commercial Innovation team.
We recently launched London RoadLab, a new way of working with innovators.
London’s transport network has been consistently delivering new technology and innovations. We are home to the very first underground railway and, in 1868, the first traffic light was introduced in London. We couldn’t imagine London without traffic lights now, but 150 years ago our roads were revolutionised by taking something used for the railway and applying it to motor traffic.
More recently, we have developed a world-leading contactless payment system, and launched our open data products. Our open data now powers nearly 700 apps, used by 42% of Londoners and has not only allowed us to work more closely with app developers, but has generated new jobs and enabled Londoners to plan their journeys through their channel of choice.
Technology continues to develop at a faster rate than ever before and it’s important that we continue to embrace the latest innovations to help us deliver better services for our customers. Following the success of open data, we wanted to explore how to work more closely with innovators to develop new products that solve our problems.
We have also been exploring what else we can do better and what problems we can solve. One of these is roadworks. Roadworks on our strategic roads have an estimated £2 billion cost to London’s economy every year, and, whilst we appreciate their importance in keeping London moving, we also know we must continue to find new and innovative ways to reduce the impact they have on the city. We knew we needed to find new ways to work with innovators to create useful and tangible solutions to solve this problem. We also knew it was important to offer unique access to our assets and expertise, and to be able to take the products forward at the end of the programme.
Sign up for RoadLab
It’s true to say that this area of innovation is new for corporates and the public sector. The value to innovators of getting to work with companies like TfL to develop something that solves citywide problems is significant, and we need to offer opportunities like innovation partnerships to enable us to deliver this.
Building on our research over the past few months, we have created a new process for bringing innovation into public sector organisations and working with innovators beyond a set programme. We are offering unique insight into TfL, providing expertise, data, and pilot sites alongside a programme of mentoring and business support from our partners at Plexal.
If you think you can make roadworks in London safer, smarter, or more inclusive please sign up today.
