Highways England has launched a £20m fund to share out among organisations with projects that can help change the way UK roads are designed, managed and used.
The agency said the biggest opportunities for the road network will come from planning ahead longer term to anticipate and respond to the requirements of future vehicles.
There are two parallel competitions running, one for feasibility studies for ideas that are unproven and at a low technology readiness level, and another for feasibility projects that have already been proven and are at a mid- to high-technology readiness level.
In both competitions, projects should tackle the transport challenges in Highways England’s Connecting the country: planning for the longer term.
They must cover one of 6 core themes:
- design, construction and maintenance, including: greater automation of the design process; greater automation of construction work, including the inspection and management of assets; adopting more modular construction techniques; expanding and improving data collection; creating a unified asset management system; increasing the use of advanced materials that are self-maintaining and extend the asset lifecycle
- connected and autonomous vehicles, such as maximising their safety and capability and increasing uptake
- customer mobility, such as improving experiences for road users and connections with other modes of transport
- energy and the environment, which covers electric and other clean energy sources as well as the impacts that road networks have on neighbouring environments
- operations, from customer service and traffic management, to roadworks and incident and severe weather response
- air quality, particularly targeting oxides of nitrogen and other air pollutants
There is £8m for the feasibility studies competition, which is across two phases and will be split across the six themes. The first phase has up to £2m for up to 20 projects to evidence and determine the feasibility of an idea. In phase two, the most promising projects from the first phase can get funding to develop and evaluate a prototype. A total of £6m will be available.
Up to £12m is available for projects where the feasibility has already been proven and are at the development phase. They should be ready for imminent on-road testing and deployment, having met necessary safety assurances. The expectation is to fund 12 projects across the 6 themes.
Both competitions open on 11 February 2019 and the deadline for each is midday on 1 May 2019. There will be a webinar briefing on 14 February for applications to find out more about the competitions.
To find out more about the feasibility studies competition click here.
To find out more about the competition for projects where feasibility has already been proven click here.
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