Transport for London is trialling Immense, a city-scale modelling tool that lets planners test hundreds of scenarios before a single cone is laid, cutting delays, costs and surprises for road users and operators.
Every year 400,000 roadworks are competing for road space in London. Utility firms need to dig, developers need to close lanes and councils need to resurface. Managing all of this – assessing knock-on effects, modelling diversions, understanding cumulative network pressure – has traditionally required expensive,
specialist modelling that takes weeks to commission and is hard to apply consistently across projects.
The result is a system struggling to keep pace. Approvals slow down and less disruptive options go untested because there is no time or budget to model them. And with infrastructure renewals, environmental programmes and development pressures all increasing the frequency of works, the gap between demand and
capacity is only growing.
Karl Kulasingam, Roadworks Performance Manager at TfL said:
“London’s road network plays an absolutely vital role in keeping the capital moving and we’re always looking for innovative ways of making our streets safer, smarter and more sustainable, and Lane Rental, part of our London on the Move Strategy, provides us with a unique platform to promote congestion busting innovation across the industry.”
TfL and transport simulation specialists Immense began with a focused pilot: could modern cloud-based modelling support the routine assessment of temporary traffic management – lane closures, signals, diversions – in a way that was fast, consistent and accessible to non-specialists?
The pilot showed it could. Large numbers of scenarios could be tested rapidly against a consistent dataset, and outputs could be read by planners through a standard web interface without deep modelling expertise. It also surfaced the issue that would shape everything that followed: trust.
For the tool to influence real decisions, the outputs had to be credible, not just technically accurate, but operationally meaningful to the people using them. The current programme builds on that foundation. A single, quality-assured model of London’s road and public transport network, built from up-to-date data and regularly
refreshed, sits behind a secure web application that authorised users can access to test and compare approaches before designs are finalised.
The tool does not automate decisions or replace statutory permitting, but complements works assessments. Its value is in providing earlier, more consistent evidence. It gives decision-makers something concrete to discuss before options are locked in, when it is still cheap to act on less disruptive alternatives. For works
promoters, that means faster feedback and less reliance on costly bespoke studies.
For London permitting authorities, it means a standardisation of approach, more proportionate use of specialist resources and a stronger audit trail across schemes.
The programme is being rolled out in phases, starting with areas facing the highest concentration of complex works, and has been co-designed with TfL teams, Immense and the Lane Rental Community – ensuring the tools reflect how planning decisions are actually made, not just how they are supposed to work on paper.
(Picture: Yay Images)
