Over the past year, the Transport Technology Forum, on behalf of the Department for Transport has been looking to consolidate local authority traffic and transport data in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of authorities and operators already provide data to the DfT, and the TTF says it is keen to engage with further data owners, from across the country, to develop a nationwide representation of the impact of lockdown and the easing of restrictions through parking data.

The TTF team says it is happy to engage with local authorities who can offer any parking datasets to support this project. To date, data owners have provided the data at a region or car-park level, with different datasets capturing either the percentage occupancy, incoming vehicle count or transactions. The TTF is ingesting data via a number of sources including UTMC and monthly transaction reports. If possible – the data would be available for both before and during the pandemic as well as potentially being made available in the future as restrictions ease.

The project relies on goodwill to provide data and is designed to support the community, with the project sharing graphics on baselines / sector trends. Arup, through the TTF, is coordinating the collection of the datasets on behalf of the DfT. Authorities are asked to please contact martyn.minear@arup.com or graham.hanson@dft.gov.uk with any available datasets or further discussion on the project.

The data is aggregated and not reported at individual local authority level.

(Picture – Yay Images)