In a Pinch? There’s a Fund for that!

Congestion is widely understood to be a grave issue for UK towns and cities, directly causing increased emissions and harming air quality. Furthermore, congestion reduces the speed of bus travel, decreasing ridership and thereby encouraging use of private cars – which of course exacerbates an already critical issue. And that’s without considering the unmeasured cost of people spending countless frustrating and unproductive hours sat in traffic.

But while the congestion challenge is well known, solutions are less well understood. In fact, there are already several technology solutions available, each of which can alleviate or mitigate the effects of congestion. And the really good news is that there’s now funding available to help local authorities to access them!

Local Pinch Point Funding Explained

The government has set aside £150m of funding to help authorities address congestion and improve journey times on local roads. This funding – the “Local pinch point fund” has an expression of interest deadline of 31 January 2020. Application forms can be obtained by emailing LT.PLANS@dft.gov.uk or downloading here.

Obtaining Funding

The government requests proposals to alleviate congestion, with bus priority measures cited as an example. Schemes must demonstrate benefit to local businesses, and improvements to productivity on completing the project. Documentation specifically mentions ‘shovel ready’ projects – emphasising how quickly benefits can be delivered.

Congestion-Busting Technology Solutions

Trapeze already has several solutions which have proven to alleviate or mitigate the impact of congestion, including real-time schedule validation to ensure optimal schedules encourage vehicle flow; traffic light priority with response feedback to aid optimisation; at-stop publicity to reduce boarding times – and more.

However, this fund could also be used to develop ambitious new technologies, so we would love to help you conceptualise new solutions which could radically reduce the impact of congestion in your area – and perhaps beyond, if we chose to focus on pan-county smart transport systems.

Building your Proposal

If you are interested in applying for pinch point funding, please get in touch. Having helped many local authorities to implement technology solutions that address congestion-related issues, we would be delighted to share our thoughts with a view to supporting your business case and bidding processes.

Our conversations with the Department for Transport indicate that they will use expression of interest submissions to inform the focus of the fund through the competitive bidding stage. Given that the strongest expressions of interest are likely to influence the direction of this fund, it would therefore be sensible to present the most compelling expressions of interest possible.

Trapeze has allocated resource to support authorities that engage with us on this fund in order to ensure that their bids stand out in this process. So if you have ambitions within your transport plan that lack the funding to become reality, please get in contact today and let’s work together.