DfT hails Rotherham signal upgrades as model scheme for national upgrades

The Department for Transport’s Head of Roads Infrastructure Technology has praised the value of DfT funding to upgrade and improve traffic signals across the country, as a new portal is launched for authorities to report information about work they have undertaken.

Darren Capes saw for himself the value of upgrading traffic signals along the A631 corridor in Rotherham, and stressed how fixing existing equipment makes a huge difference, explaining: “The TSOG Grant wasn’t only for dealing with equipment that was end of life , it was about maintaining equipment and replacing it when it’s financially sensible to do so, in order to increase benefits to road users and to reduce maintenance costs.”

Rotherham is one of the first authorities to complete their works. It was one of the recipients of a share of the £30 million shared among councils across England in 2024 for upgrades to obsolete traffic signals, alongside another £20 million in the “Green Light Fund”. Rotherham received nearly £600,000 to fund a range of solutions including upgrading traffic signal systems and replacing equipment to improve reliability, increase functionality and reduce energy consumption.

“We’ve upgraded obsolete equipment and introduced new communications networks, which is a mixture of wireless kit and fibreoptic communications,” explained Traffic Systems Engineer Mick Powell, “The TSOG Grant enabled us to replace everything along this route. The added benefits for us have been improved journey times, which was unexpected, as well as reduced wait times for pedestrians. So, it’s been a real win-win situation for us.”

Project Engineer James Drinkall explains that the DfT funding: “Meant that we’ve been able to upgrade a lot more sites than we thought we could, which would probably have taken us another five or six years to do. We’ve seen improvements in journey times, a reduction in carbon and reduction in energy costs too. Also, at this particular intersection, we have seen improved journeys for drivers as well as improvements for pedestrians.”

“One of the features that we’ve built into these crossings on this corridor is ‘forward demanding’”, added Senior Engineer Steve Wood” “If you’re crossing in one direction, unless there’s a particularly heavy flow of traffic in all directions, you will get progression from one side of the road directly, without having to press the button the second time and then wait.”

New sensors were also used for both pedestrians and buses, which means that bus priority solutions were also included in the upgrade, speeding up journeys into the town.

“The A631, is a very important link connecting various elements of Rotherham, but most importantly, it plays a role in the wider highway network, being a key link between the M1 and M18,” added Matthew Reynolds, Assistant Director for Transport Policy and Integration at the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. “By investing in the infrastructure, like traffic signals, you don’t just get the benefit of the renewed asset, which is obviously critical, but you also get improvements around journey times. These benefits are typically seen quite quickly as a result of travel signal changes, so they’re more efficient.”

The lessons learned in Rotherham will now be used more widely across South Yorkshire, while the Department for Transport is hoping to use projects like the one in Rotherham to build business cases for more traffic signals infrastructure funding.

“The work that Rotherham have done and the work that others have done as well around the UK, has proved that that the initial assumption was right, that if we spend money replacing traffic signals, allowing authorities to tune traffic signals, to replace obsolete equipment, we will actually get a benefit from that,” concluded Darren Capes. “If you improve the equipment, you improve the service. The work that Rotherham and others have done have just proved that’s the case. The fact that Rotherham have worked on a very coordinated corridor into the city now allows us to do some stringent statistical analysis of this and model the actual economic benefits, which will only make it easier to make the case in the future.”

All local authorities in receipt of TSOG or GLF Funding are required to update their scheme information in the TTF Data Portal, as part of the monitoring and reporting requirements for the grant. An upgraded version of this portal, TTF Gateway, is now available at gateway.ttf.uk.net. Registered users of the existing portal will be contacted directly to assist with logins to the upgraded version.