Background

The UTMC Initiative

To assist local authorities gain the most from ITS and achieve their transport objectives, the UK Department for Transport initiated the six-year, £6M Urban Traffic Management and Control (UTMC) programme in 1997. The first half of the UTMC programme (1997-2000) concentrated on specific applied research tasks, on both technical and operational issues. UTMC systems are designed to allow the different applications used within modern traffic management systems to communicate and share information with each other. Thereby a more robust and intelligent system can be used to meet current and future management requirements.

UTMC has helped local authorities achieve their goals by adopting an appropriate, but not over constraining, set of standards to allow users, suppliers and integrators of UTMC systems to plan and supply systems cost-effectively in an open market. Today UTMC is the preferred ITS platform for UK towns and cities. More information on the UTMC Initiative can be found at: www.utmc.gov.uk.