Highways and Open Data make progress - one year on from Future Highways in Birmingham.....

A year ago today saw the Future Highways conference hosted at iCentrum, Innovation Birmingham, bringing the highways maintenance, open data and tech communities together.

This felt like a huge success to me after years of working with data, visualisation, benchmarking and performance management to support the highway industry's desire for change.

But a year on, it seems more like the beginning. It was a huge personal challenge for me to design and deliver that event, but the rewards have been more than worth it. 

For me its always been about how we can create active, tangible change to deliver what we've been talking about and have known is needed for so long. So its a pleasure to be doing just that collaborating with Birmingham City Council and Transport for West Midlands to run the Birmingham Highways Data Challenge in November 2016, and the Data Discovery Centre at Traffex in April 2017.

Also, forging deeper connections within and across DfT, Transport Systems Catapult, CIHT, Local Government Technical Advisers Group, SME's, the Open Data Institute, oneTransport, PTRC and the Transport Planning community, and the many others who are supporting and encouraging this and other great work by so many others to make the change happen. 

Highways England ran their first #HighwaysHack with ODI Leeds in October 2016. And March 2017 saw the launch of the Transport Systems Catapult report outlining The case for Government Involvement to Incentivise Data Sharing in the UK Intelligent Mobility sector.

I'm particularly excited to deepen all this work in the coming year, and feel lucky to be working closely with the Innovation Birmingham campus where Future Highways was held last year.

The opportunities and challenges facing the West Midlands are significant, and its a fantastic opportunity to share this journey with them helping make the real data stuff happen on the ground.

The same is true in other regions though; so finding and linking together the challenges / policy drivers, assets and great work already happening for added mutual benefit is the key.

This is but a small list of some of the challenges, projects and opportunities in the West Midlands:

• A critical air pollution problem in Birmingham. It is one of 5 UK-mandated cities (others are: Leeds, Nottingham, Derby and Southampton) for Air Quality, where the government has outlined the need for Clean Air Zones to be implemented by 2020.
•  Birmingham's status as one of the best places for digital, tech and creative startups in the U.K, with many SME's building future transport solutions, like Conigital with their autonomous pod, and the recently launch Midlands CAV community
•  First UK trial of the MaaS Global Whim app in West Midlands, enabling users to buy all their transport needs through a single app (Mobility as a Service).
•  The West Midlands tradition in automotive industries (particularly Jaguar Land Rover), involved in connected and autonomous vehicle research.
•  Autonomous vehicle trials on 40 miles of urban roads, dual-carriageways and motorways in Coventry and Warwickshire (as part of the UK Connected Intelligent Transport Environment (CITE) project.
•  The expertise and innovative approach to open standards, open source and open data within Birmingham City Council and Transport for West Midlands
• Working with open source services company Mapbox to solve smart city challenges. West Midlands Combined Authority is one of three global cities, alongside Melbourne (Australia), and Bloomington, Indiana (US), to work with Mapbox to solve smart cities congestion challenges with open source products and services.
•  A strong and vibrant open source, open data community, including Mappa Mercia (Open Street Map's active regional group), wikidata (Andy Mabbett/Pigs on the Wing), West Midlands Open Data Forum, and ODI Birmingham.
•  A strong civic tech and social value scene, including Our New Union, hyperlocal sites, and community rail groups
•  Transport Systems Catapult / Transport for West Midlands Intelligent Mobility incubator at iCentrum, Innovation Birmingham campus.
•  Regional universities with internationally recognised expertise in related fields, including:
• Aston – Transport, Engineering.
• University of Birmingham – new energy sources and sensor technology.
• Birmingham City University – location next to HS2 Curzon St Station, Digital Media and Technology lab; and School of Media, including Paul Bradshaw's recently launched MA in Data Journalism from September 2017.
•  Schools and academies celebrating STEM and STEAM projects, and welcoming engagement and involvement with real life industry challenges: 7 Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Academies across the West Midlands, Aston University Engineering Academy, and UK Engineering's Tomorrow's Engineers programme
•  Brand new  National College for High Speed Rail in Birmingham, and National Transport Design Centre in Coventry, plus delivery of Highways England leadership programme in Coventry.

So for me it's extra special today to read of Chris Grayling's proposals for the Major Road Network and sharing of funds across local authorities to support local road network management and maintenance. This builds on the fantastic work of David Quarmby and Phil Carey with the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund and hopefully starts to redress the chronic imbalance in support for the local road network many have recognised for years.

And tomorrow sees the start of the first two-day Digital Transport Exchange from Landor LINKS, held in Oxford. The lineup and scope of the event is fantastic, perhaps building and expanding on those early roots last year (but then I would say that, wouldn't I...!).

So my first anniversary of Future Highways message is - lot can happen in a year....

And to all those who think we need to do things differently and are waiting for someone else to do it, remember; change starts with you. If you want to see it happen, make it happen! You're the only one standing in your way.