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The Technology Combating Congestion

24 February 2020

​When you need to be somewhere fast, you’re probably going to meet the arch nemesis of drivers, traffic. With the sheer number of cars on our roads there’s no way to avoid the congestion sometimes. However, new government funded technology trials may be coming to the rescue to ease the strain on our roads. Will technology become our traffic saviour?

Before looking at how technology could be impacting our journeys in the future, we should first see some of the innovations already on our roads. Highways England are now using a little robot to use precise positioning technology to mark out where the white lines need to be painted on new or resurfaced roads. This may not seem overly impressive but according to Highways England it is saving motorists from hundreds of hours of disruption. For example, a job that would take two engineers a week to complete only takes a mere four hours for the ‘mighty’ robot.

Moving on to what the future holds for resolving our traffic woes. Vivacity is leading a program trialling in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole that will look to combine a blend of data sources and predictive machine learning to provide proactive traffic management tools to control operators. This will allow them to respond quickly to incidents and stop traffic jams from forming.

Elsewhere in the country, in Oxford, Technology SME IM23 is creating a tool which predicts and tackles congestion helping to keep traffic moving and provides useful insight to making efficient improvements to the road network. In York, Inrix is working on using vehicle tracks to map vehicle routes optimising traffic signals in the city allowing vehicles to flow more freely.

As our roads and traffic management become ‘smarter’ we too at Marshall Leasing look to use innovations to help keep your fleets moving. Our telematics systems, MarshallMatics has been designed to assist and warn drivers of the changing conditions, from road closures to road works. The app will be able to assist with your planned journeys offering alternative routes ahead of problems months in advance. This not only reduces time wasted sitting stationary in traffic, but also cuts down on fuel costs and emissions.

To find out more on how we can help with all of your fleet requirements, please visit our dedicated ‘Telematics’ section on our website, or call us directly on 01480 414541.

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