Telecommunications network

Tender description

Transport for London (TfL) is responsible for planning and operating London's transport network. Strategic Analysis forms 1 of the 3 divisions in TfL Planning directorate, the other 2 being Strategy and Planning and Borough Planning. The role of Strategic Analysis is to provide analytical evidence to support the transport strategies, policies and interventions contained within strategic documents such as the Mayor's Transport Strategy, Economic Development Strategy and London Plan. In addition to this, the division provides network wide monitoring, ensuring that documents such as the Mayors Transport Strategy (MTS) deliver against their strategic objectives. Strategic Analysis is a centre of expertise for development and use of models including multi-modal, land-use and other bespoke models, these models form a suite of transport models which complement each other and provide the strategic context for others models used across TfL for example in LU and Surface. These models are often used to estimate how the transport network would operate under various scenarios. Outputs from these models are considered when deciding on investments worth billions of pounds in London's networks. It is therefore critical that the models are developed so that TfL Transport Planning can provide reliable recommendations on future travel demands. Industry and DfT guidance for transport models requires that they are calibrated to recent travel demand data. The most important source of highway demand data has previously been road-side interviews (RSIs) which the guidance indicates should generally be less than 6 years old. This data underpins all of TfL's strategic and tactical highway models including, Highways Assignment Models (HAMs), Surface Transport's Operational Network Evaluator (ONE) model and London Transport Studied Model (LTS). In 2014 TfL launched a study to gain a better understanding of Estimating Demand from Mobile Network Data, this was known as Project EDMOND — Phase 1 (ICT11734). This project was initiated in order to explore the potential for new data sources to replace RSIs as they are disruptive to traffic, yield low sample data and do not have the potential to provide information on non-highway modes of transport. Strategic Analysis has explored the potential for RSI data collection to be replaced by other methods. TfL would now like to acquire a service that uses new approaches to data collection for its transport models. TfL has recently engaged with the market and has undertaken a number of research studies (including Project EDMOND Phase 1), related to the use of new types of technology for transport model data collection. The studies led to the conclusion that information that is held by the Mobile Telecommunication operators of data that is transmitted by mobile communication devices and satellite Navigation systems should play a more central role in the development of travel demand planning. The modes of transport in scope for this work are: — Private cars — Bicycles — Light goods vehicles — Heavy goods vehicles — Taxi and private hire — Buses and coaches — National Rail.