Industry sage Steve Gooding has used his keynote address this year’s popular JCT Traffic Signals Symposium to tell the audience that our transport networks will rely on people driving cars for the foreseeable future, while gantries might never disappear from our roadsides.
Mr Gooding, the Director of the RAC Foundation and former Director General at the Department for Transport used his Keynote Address “The Future?” that “about 43 million people in this country have got a full driving licence, and another 10 million stacking, as in they’ve got a provisional driving licence” and that “.and anyone who knows, anyone who’s been trying to get a driving test recently will know that enthusiasm for getting a full driving licence appears to be showing no real let up in most parts of the country where you’ll be waiting six months or more to get a practical driving test appointment. So the death of driving, I think, has been perhaps overstated.”
Mr Gooding sketched out some of the challenges that are being posed for transport and traffic management professionals, talking about a trend of fewer, shorter trips are being offset by population growth, emphasising the need for better traffic management.
He predicted a shift towards electric vehicles, driven by government policy, and the potential impact of autonomous vehicles. He stressed the importance of accurate data and strategic planning to handle increased road and street works due to deferred maintenance and new housing developments.
When it came to the predictions of the replacement of the gantry by in-car messaging, he rejected the idea that this would gantries could be removed. Showing a picture of a departure board at Birmingham New Street Station, he showed how passengers were referring to that shared information board rather than relying on checking data on their phones.
“Here’s the thing about railway stations, quite often, there’s a lot of people there,” he said. “They all have smartphones, the signal bandwidth in the station is not good enough for them all to get reliable information quickly on their smartphones all at once, particularly when things go wrong. But even if it was, they love a departure board. They love the triangulation. They love the fact that it’s not just their piece of kit that’s telling them something. They’re all looking at the same information at the same time. I put it to you that the age of the gantry and the roadside sign and the roadside signal is very far from over, in fact, my prediction is it’s not going to be over, because we like that sort of thing. We like the reassurance it gives you that’s probably the nearest you’re going to get to an actual prediction from me today.”
In the entertaining speech, which will be made available on the JCT Traffic Signals Symposium YouTube channel next month, he also talked about AI, junctions and “garbage in, garbage out.”
The videos are being recorded by Highways News thanks to the sponsorship of 4way Consulting, AGD Systems/Traffic Group Signals, Adey Electronics, Mobius Networks, smartmicro UK, and TRL Software.
(Picture – JCT)
