It is 2½ years since the York Council was awarded £2.85 million by the government to develop a “Smart Travel Evolution Programme” (STEP). It would monitor and enable “analysis of real-time journey information to improve travel in York”.

The Council said it would use “co-operative ‘urban traffic control’ (UTC), where vehicles and traffic signals work together to improve the network  reducing congestion and emissions”.

“STEP will also generate a multi-layered, real-time model of traffic, public transport and air quality data, allowing York to prepare for connected and autonomous vehicles”.

We were told that the scheme would see the control systems capture data, process it and react to conditions in real-time.

Since then taxpayers have heard little although a £200k contract to Dynniq UK Ltd for a “Smarter Travel Evolution Programme – Green Light Optimised Speed Advisory System” was let a few months ago.

It is understood that this is aimed at improving the efficiency of the Councils own fleet.

Time for an update on this expensive project we think.

Just what benefits have we seen?