The next phase of the process to distribute £70 million of new money to Local Authorities to make traffic signals more efficient is underway, with letters and guidance outlining the application process sent to council Chief Officers across England.

As part of the Department for Transport’s Plan for Drivers, the money is being spent on a range of solutions including upgrading traffic signal systems, replacing unreliable and obsolete equipment to improve reliability, tuning up signals to better reflect current traffic conditions and get traffic flowing, and the deployment of advanced technology to make use of emerging technologies to optimise traffic flow and balance traffic across city centres.

These are broken into three separate funds – a £30 million Traffic Signals Obsolescence Grant (TSOG), a £20 million Green Light Fund (GLF), and another £20 million Intelligent Traffic Management Fund (ITMF).

The opportunity to apply for funding is being offered to all English local highway and combined authorities outside London. Guidance has been published detailing the workings of the funding, including the £10 million part of the TSOG that will be automatically paid to all eligible authorities and  the remaining £20 million of TSOG, plus the two £20 million funds for GLF and ITMF that will be awarded through challenge processes opening in November.

The application process for the challenge element of TSOG, and all of GLF is now open, and will close on 22 December.  Once bids have been submitted, they will be assessed during January with award letters sent out at the end of February, and money, in £500,000 lots allocated to authorities in March 2024.  Successful bidders will have two years to deliver schemes and will be required to report on progress regularly during the delivery period.

The online process will be the same as that used for the 2021 Traffic Signal Maintenance allocation, and authorities will be restricted to only one of the funds. Authorities who made applications for TSM in 2021 will still have login details for this which can be used again, but LCRIG will support authorities in accessing the process.

For ITMF, there will be a similar challenge process which will result in the award of eight-to-ten awards of around £2m, which will be applied for between April and June 2024 with funding awarded to successful applicants in September.

As well as Chief Officers, councils’ signals managers will be contacted by the Department for Transport in the coming days, urging them to consider which funds they wish to apply for.  The Transport Technology Forum is working with by the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) to manage the challenge process on behalf of the DfT.

Read the guidance here.

(Picture shows TTF Manager Darren Capes of the Department for Tranport outlining the process at the TTF autumn update in Birmingham).