Tag: London roads

DevelopersInformationNews

Tower Bridge Closure – Data Set Released

on September 29, 2016

The City of London Corporation are planning essential major maintenance works to Tower Bridge. The work will require a full closure of the bridge to all vehicle and cyclist traffic for three months. The closure will be in place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from Saturday 1 October to Friday 30 December 2016.

As part of our open data policy, we’re releasing a full data set of the closure to allow developers to easily incorporate this data into their apps, helping Londoners to plan their journeys while the works are ongoing.

Tower Bridge Road Closures Map

The City of London will be carrying out essential maintenance on Tower Bridge. Full details of the closure are in our data set.

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DevelopersNews

London Data City | Data Nation Challenge – Extra Info

on April 25, 2016

As previously posted on this blog, London Data City | Data Nation was launched on 12 April, with a series of 6 month-long challenges being undertaken by teams in London and Singapore.

The first in the series of challenges is the Transport and Mobility challenge, which is now underway and runs until Monday 16 May.

At the launch event for the challenge Rikesh Shah, Lead Digital Relationship Manager at TfL, introduced our open data policy and set the scene for the challenge. Following up on the launch event, Rikesh has a message for the participants with some handy extra info:

Dear all,

I hope you’re all enjoying the challenge.

At the launch of the Data Nation challenge I promised that I would provide more information about TfL, with a particular focus on customer insight. So, I am delighted to provide a link to some useful information.

In particular, have a look at Chapter 7 which focuses on Customer Experience.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-report-8.pdf

Good luck!

All the best,

Rikesh Shah,
Transport for London

DevelopersNews

Data City | Data Nation Launch – The Challenge is Underway

on April 13, 2016

The London Data City | Data Nation challenge was launched on the morning of Tuesday 12 April at an event hosted by Digital Catapult. The launch event outlined the context and details of the 6 month-long challenge being undertaken by teams in London and Singapore, starting with the Transport and Mobility challenge that runs until Monday 16 May.

In partnership with TfL, the Greater London Authority and Ford, Digital Catapult are setting challenges based around 2 key questions:

Public Transport Challenge

How can we accurately identify, filter and characterise transportation delay events across large-scale, dynamic, multi-modal transportation systems?

Enabling users to make seamless progress towards their destination. People need help to very quickly identify breaks in the system and need greater help for decision making in case the system breaks and when to abandon their plans for a better option. Participants need to choose data sources (from sandbox or beyond) to achieve the end goal.

Road Network Challenge

How can we enhance customer service and experience across London’s road network?

Through Data City | Data Nation we intend to deliver new technology solutions that help understand and predict events on London’s road network and go about enhancing the overall customer experience whilst travelling that network. TfL will provide SCOOT traffic data (described in more detail here) to participants of the challenge that is not yet publicly available.

We’ll update this blog as key milestones in the challenge are met, and will of course announce the winners in May. Good luck to all taking part!

Setting the scene for the challenge

There were many expert speakers setting the context and details of the challenge, and their presentations are summarised below.

Rikesh Shah

Rikesh Shah, Lead Relationship Manager at TfL, introduced our open data policy and what data would be released for the challenge

Introduction – Chirdeep Chhabra, Digital Catapult

  • Digital Catapult’s 4 main areas of focus: Sharing of data between organisations, personal data, content and licensed data and data generated across the Internet of Things
  • Data City | Data Nation overview: Brings together London and Singapore and private sector closed data in a sandbox for innovation, 6 months duration for the whole challenge. Transport and Mobility starts today
  • Aim is to produce new insight into public services and private products
  • Email dcdn@digitalcatapult.org.uk for more info

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DevelopersNews

Traffic Data Hack Day – Event Review

on April 11, 2016

As previously outlined in our post on March 30 on this blog, the Traffic Data Hack Day was hosted by Amazon Web Services on April 6. The event was attended by TfL employees, academics working within this subject area, data scientists, transport app developers and data visualisation developers.

Another key event in our engagement with those working with our open data, the day was split into two areas, with one focussed on visualising TfL data and the other on extracting data from the source and providing it for analysis.

I’ve not attended a hackathon or hack day before, so it was really interesting to see how they work and to meet participants from all sorts of backgrounds, including universities, consultancies, government agencies and other parts of TfL.

At the beginning of the day we split the focus into two areas; ‘EMR (Elastic Map Reduce)’ where the group was looking at ways to improve the feed of, access to and processing of the SCOOT data and ‘Redshift’ where the group made use of data that had been uploaded to the system and was ready to analyse.

teams working

A team working on ‘Redshift’ which made use of data that had been uploaded to the system and was ready to analyse.

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DevelopersNews

Data City | Data Nation – Transport and Mobility Event

on April 6, 2016

Introduction

Join us for the launch of the London Data City | Data Nation transport and mobility challenge on Tuesday 12 April. Hosted by Digital Catapult, this event will set the scene for the challenge with industry stakeholders and keynote speakers alongside leading transport organisations.

TfL have agreed the challenges with Ford, the other partner for this event, and we’ll also be providing expert speakers and judges and offering technical support to the participants. We’ll be providing open data from our Unified API as well as the historic Traffic Data Enquiry System (TDES) data generated by SCOOT traffic sensors across London (which detect traffic flows at junctions and then optimise traffic signals every second to help keep vehicles moving).

Our TDES data hasn’t been made publicly available yet, so we’re hoping to see some great innovative solutions to some of the key transport and mobility challenges, from participants both in London and Singapore.

This event is another example of our continuing commitment to open data with over 8,000 registered users, as well as our determination to open up our data and support the developer community as much as possible to help create great products and solutions that help London keep working and growing, and make life in the city better.

Where and when

Venue: Digital Catapult Centre
101 Euston Road, London, NW1 2RA
View on Google Maps

12 April 2016 09:00 – 12:00

To register

You can register for the event here

We'll be making our Traffic Data Enquiry System data available to the participants of the challenge

We’ll be making our Traffic Data Enquiry System data available to the participants of the challenge

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DevelopersNews

Traffic Data Hack Day – Register Now

on March 30, 2016

**Registration for this event is now closed**

Introduction

TfL’s Urban Traffic Control System (UTC) uses 12,000 sensors located at junctions across the Capital to measure traffic flow. The data produced is used to drive SCOOT – the traffic light optimiser system – and on Wednesday 6 April we’re aiming to generate greater value from this as-yet untapped data source.

We want to configure a data processing engine for UTC data and begin exploring this large data set using the tools business users are familiar with, such as R Studio and Tableau, as well as event streams, map reduce type platforms and machine learning tools.

The event is part of our ongoing drive to work with the dev community to create great products from our open data, and offers an opportunity to learn and experiment with cloud tools in a safe, sandbox type environment. Experts from TfL’s Road Space Management team will be on hand to provide support.

Where and when

Venue: Amazon Development Centre, Leadenhall Court, One Leadenhall Street, London, EC3V 1PP

6 April 2016 09:00 – 17:00

Lunch will be provided, so please let us know any dietary requirements.

To register

Please confirm your attendance by Tuesday 5th April – you can register for the event here: http://www.cvent.com/d/4fqcf4

Venue for the hack day

Amazon are hosting the Traffic Data Hack Day on April 6 at the Amazon Development Centre in Leadenhall Street, London

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DevelopersNews

London Collision Map and Improved Cycle Journey Planning

on March 7, 2016

As part of a wider road safety strategy, last week we launched the London Collision Map and London collision data on our website and in our API, as part of our ongoing commitment to providing open data. We’ve also made improvements to cycle journey planning.

The new cycle journey planning features include:

  • Google street view images at every turn of the route to help cyclists prepare a ‘mental map’ of their route and visualise junctions before they make their journey.
  • The location and details of cycle parking at London rail stations including information on the number of potential spaces, the type of cycle parking and whether it is covered.
  • ‘Cycle route classifications’ for each section of the journey describing the type of cycling environment that cyclists will encounter along their route (e.g. Cycle Superhighways or routes through parks) helping them to be more informed about the journey they will be making.
  • Identification of steep hills along the route.

The other new feature, the London Collision Map, allows searches for road collisions across London, providing information about when and where they occurred, as well as the severity of the incidents, dating back to 2005. It uses STATS-19 casualty dataset, collected annually by the Department for Transport, and shows a significant reduction in the number of collisions over time.

Through this data we’re able to inform people about junctions and roads that have high numbers of collisions, and where road users should be particularly careful. The 2014 figures show that this number fell to its lowest level since records began, in line with the Mayor’s target to halve the number of people killed and seriously injured (KSI’s) by 2020.

The London Collision Map, showing fatal and serious collisions in 2014, around the area of St. James's Park Underground station.

The London Collision Map, showing fatal and serious collisions in 2014, around the area of St. James’s Park Underground station.

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DevelopersNews

London Marathon – Road Closures Data

on March 1, 2016

The London Marathon is one of the most famous sporting events in the world, and thousands of participants will once again be taking up the challenge through central London on April 24. There will be significant road closures on and around the route of the Marathon and drivers are advised, where possible, to avoid driving in central and southeast London from early morning until evening.

There are typically full road closures, starting early in the morning between Greenwich Park and St James’s Park. Central and City closures will typically include all approaches to Upper Thames Street, Tower Hill and Victoria Embankment. Rotherhithe Tunnel, Tower, Southwark and Westminster bridges will also be closed. A phased reopening of roads usually takes place from around midday with all roads expected to be fully reopened by 19:00.

Some roads that are nearby the closures are also generally busier as a result of drivers seeking alternative routes, and we’re determined to help road users as much as we possibly can on the day of the event.

What have we done?

To allow third parties to understand the extent, scope and timing of these road closures, we’ve created a data set of all the road closures that will be in place for this year’s London Marathon. This has been created using an industry data exchange standard called DATEX II.

This is part of a pilot where we’ll be trialling a different approach to releasing data, with the intention of helping developers make great products for drivers.

The London Marathon

Our road closures data set for the London Marathon is part of a pilot to allow us to trial a different approach to releasing data. Picture via http://www.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com

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InformationNews

Disruptive Technology & Road Transport – Event Review

on February 16, 2016

The Disruptive Technology and Road Transport event took place last Wednesday, February 10, and was part of the Streets Ahead exhibition currently running at the New London Architecture.

The purpose of the event was to continue TfL’s engagement with the technology sector and road user groups, to consider how technology is introducing new challenges and opportunities for the way the road network functions. It was also a good chance to help shape our collective thinking on how to respond, and to identify the role that the tech sector can play in solving some of the challenges London faces.

The event was split into two halves, with speakers presenting to the audience in the first half before a group discussion across multiple tables, with each tackling a different topic.

The speakers at the event were as follows:

  • Chair’s Welcome: Ben Plowden (TfL)
  • Scene Setting: Isabel Dedring (Deputy Mayor for Transport)
  • The Future is Now: Greg Lindsay (Journalist, urbanist, futurist, and speaker.
  • Traffic Management in the Digital Age: Alan Bristow and Helen Chapman (TfL)
Isabel Dedring

Isabel Dedring, the Deputy Mayor for Transport, introduces the major themes of the afternoon in the opening presentation

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