BOURNEMOUTH is one of three ‘cities’ set to benefit from a £1.5 million investment to trial innovative transport projects.

The three ‘cities’, Bournemouth, York and Oxfordshire, will trial new ways of using data generated by transport in towns and cities to improve driving conditions for thousands of people.

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole’s roads will be monitored by software developed by Vivacity which will check traffic and flag incidents in real time, allowing traffic control operators to respond quickly and stop traffic jams forming.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps said: “Congestion isn’t just bad for our environment, productivity and communities, it also has a huge impact on our national economy.

“That’s why, as well as our multi-billion-pound investment in rail and buses to improve connectivity, we are opening up city centre, transport and traffic management to new digital innovators.

“Transport technology is a growing global sector. Today’s competition winners show how world class UK transport tech companies are helping millions of people in our towns and cities every day.”

Peter Mildon, chief operating officer at Vivacity Labs, said: “Vivacity will be heading a project that looks at how a blend of data sources and predictive machine learning can be combined to provide proactive traffic management tools to BCP Council.

“Vivacity are excited to be working with Siemens for this project, with both companies building on work carried out in phase one of the GovTech Challenge.”

The funding forms part of the Govtech Catalyst, a £20 million fund to help solve local transport issues through tech and the government has been investing in new ways to use data to improve driving conditions and reduce time drivers spend in traffic jams.

Councillor Andy Hadley, cabinet member for transport and infrastructure at BCP Council said: “We are very pleased that we were successful in our bid to trial new and innovative transport technology to reduce traffic jams.”