Exciting, innovative solutions to tackle the challenge of congestion are starting to emerge as a result of more funding and the work of the Transport Technology Forum (TTF), according to Anthony Ferguson, Deputy Director at the Department for Transport.

Speaking at the TTF Congestion Challenge event in York today, he described congestion as “the biggest problem”.

“One of the reasons we keep coming round to it, he says, is because it’s so hard to fix,” he said. “One of the exciting things of the last few years is the funding to find new solutions to congestion, and technology is a way to do things differently.  Better information, better tools, better services is used efficiently.  These are the sorts of things the TTF is here to do,” he told delegates.

“We haven’t been in lockdown sitting on our hands doing nothing – everyone has been really busy and so we can hear the projects that are starting to show promise that means here-and-now problems can be solved by here-and-now solutions.”

Also speaking at the event, Dave Atkinson, Head of Highways and Transport at City of York, said York’s approach to sustainable mobility such as its recent e-scooter trial, are making a difference towards changing transport in the city.

“When we talk about our e-scooter trial with our residents, it has led to either a beaming smile or recoil by people.  But we think we have shifted about 16,000 car journeys onto e-scooter.  That’s a drop in the ocean, yes, but it’s all about small changes and the things that excite me most about the e-scooter trial is that we have introduced a new mode of transport and a shared mobility scheme.  Shared mobility plays a fundamental role in changing transport,” he said.

“On EV charging, our hyper hubs have been built and are about to be switched on, and that would effectively give us two top-class ultra rapid and rapid facilities on the outskirts of the city to deliver resident charging and people travelling.  We have solar harvesting and battery storage to deliver sustainable charging.  In the city we also have in plan a third hub in the city centre.  That will go through planning at the beginning of next year.”