Joint UK government procurement seeks supplier to support controversial Clean Air Zone system
- Reference: 1618308911
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/13/uk_clean_air_zone_contract/
- Source link:
In February 2016, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Transport formed a Joint Air Quality Unit (JAQU) to help tackle NO 2 (nitrogen dioxide) pollution in UK cities.
[2]
NO 2 pollution resulting from the diesel exhaust of cars, trucks, buses, and vans in cities can trigger and exacerbate existing asthma symptoms, or may lead to the development of asthma over longer periods of time. Additionally, it reacts with sunlight to form ozone, which is also damaging to the lungs.
The government's CAZ policy targets areas where it aims to cut this damaging pollutant, as well as reduce particulate matter. The policy includes a changing scheme to make drivers or operators of polluting vehicles pay to enter certain restricted areas.
[3]
The CAZ central service being implemented is made up of a software system, a customer-facing contact centre (from the DVLA), and penalties and enforcements (managed by local authorities).
With the current contract expiring in 2021, the Secretary of State for Transport requires a supplier to provide support and maintenance services.
In 2018, JAQU [4]awarded a £450,000 contract to developer Informed Solutions to build software to take data from automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras to determine whether a vehicle entering a CAZ is compliant with emissions standards and, if not, how much it should be charged. It would also allow motorists of transport operators to pay charges.
This time last year, an ANPR system aimed at enforcing a CAZ turned out to be a point of weakness in Sheffield, as The Register [5]exclusively revealed . A Reg investigation at the time found that an unsecured ANPR management dashboard – ultimately meant to support the city's CAZ proposal – could have been used by anyone who found it to reconstruct a particular vehicle's journey, or series of journeys, from its number plate, right down to the minute. That system had been put together by American megacorp 3M several years back, with its current owners, Neology, saying it no longer managed the system at the time of the breach.
The new deal
In a recent [6]contract notice , JAQU said the current contract comes to an end this year, which is why it is looking for a "Technical Delivery and Support Provider" to offer "a high-quality service to JAQU, local authorities, fleet operators, users and all other stakeholders of the CAZ Digital Solution."
The scope of the new contract, worth up to £22m, could include the transition of the existing digital solution, support and maintenance, technical delivery and development, as well as onboarding of local authorities. The contract is set to start in October.
In a [7]blog published in March 2021 , Informed Solutions said the central CAZ service is a national digital infrastructure running on AWS. Several services were already live, including the Vehicle Compliance Checker – a national GOV.UK service used by motorists to determine if they will be charged for driving into a CAZ.
"PaaS and SaaS AWS offerings have been used wherever possible to accelerate and de-risk delivery, maximise technical quality and minimise administrative and maintenance overheads," the blog said. "A serverless execution model is used to maximise the solutions' ability to scale elastically in response to changing demand. A loosely microservice-based architecture has been adopted so that it is possible to incrementally build, test and release the solution in an agile way."
Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard [8]READ MORE
Some authorities have begun procuring their own infrastructure. In July last year, the transport authority for Greater Manchester in northwest England [9]published a tender for a vendor to build systems for ANPR, managing payments of fines and managing a database of vehicles' status under emissions regulations in a contract worth up to £235m.
No news of that award has been published. Transport for Greater Manchester has been contacted for comment.
Some councils have already gone live with their systems. [10]A system in Bath has been launched which was said to have left local [11]councillors' "blood boiling" because it pushed pollution to surrounding areas.
[12]
However, other systems have been delayed. Last year, Leeds and Birmingham were due to implement the first CAZs in England by the end of the summer, with Oxford's Zero Emission Zone to follow in December, according to an [13]industry news site . ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/07/manchester_seeks_235_million_partner/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YHXAGmtECSZvWbTNseHYMQAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YHXAGmtECSZvWbTNseHYMQAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/digital-outcomes-and-specialists/opportunities/7349
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/28/anpr_sheffield_council/
[6] https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/007474-2021#II.%20Object-0
[7] https://www.informed.com/uk/blog/2021/march-2021/improving-the-uk-s-air-quality-delivering-the-digital-infrastructure-to-support-clean-air-zones/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/28/anpr_sheffield_council/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/07/manchester_seeks_235_million_partner/
[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-56394921
[11] http://www.whitehorsenews.co.uk/blog/2021/03/30/baths-clean-air-zone-has-councillors-blood-boiling-2/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YHXAGmtECSZvWbTNseHYMQAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://airqualitynews.com/2020/07/06/clean-air-zones-postponed-or-cancelled/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: What's so controversial?
it's nothing to do with reducing emissions, but simply grabbing money from those who do not subscribe to the motor industries policy of wanting everyone to upgrade their car at great expense every 3 or 4 years. Cars can easily last 20 years - 300,000 miles these days, and a car that runs and runs is MUCH more environmentally friendly than breaking it up and building a new one to replace it every few years. Emissions have fallen by leaps and bounds over the 30ish years since the introduction of catalytic converters, particulate filters, fuel injection systems, etc., any further improvement is miniscule and at great expense.
Some of us are old enough to remember city centres of the 70's and 80's (many of us even before then) when every corporation bus was belching plumes of black soot out of the exhaust, not to mention the soot coming off coal fires in every domestic chimney...... We have come a long way, and evolution will take us a bit further, it doesn't need councils to go assaulting their citizens wallets for having the cheek to want to go to work to change things further.
Re: What's so controversial?
Also it's because a lot of pollution can be fixed by improvements to road layouts, better signalling, speed bump removal, better road surfaces, alternative routes and on and on.
Re: What's so controversial?
Traffic light phasing. Abolish roundabouts where everyone has to slow down, stop, speed up.
Keep traffic moving efficiently.
'nuff said.
Re: What's so controversial?
Some traffic also has to slow down, stop & speed up again at traffic light controlled junctions and, in fact any point where one traffic stream intersects with another unless they're all provided with flyovers or underpasses.
Re: What's so controversial?
Interestingly, in Norwich "terrible, polluting cars" were banned and a public transport only access only area was established to reduce pollution, which exceeded EU limits and the area monitoring recorded the highest figures in the city. Having been in place for a few years, "they" are looking for a solution to the problem of the area continuing to exceed EU pollution limits and still recording the highest figures in the city ... doh! Car drivers are obviously quite happy to sit in queues elsewhere as a result of yet another Norwich traffic "idea" yet even those areas still don't generate pollution figures as high as the 'only public transport only' areas. Obviously, quite obviously, there is a patently obvious problem about pollution to be addressed which isn't being done.
Re: What's so controversial?
The notion that carrying everyone on public transport will be cleaner for the environment depends on the transport, electric trams or a Metro system would probably improve a city centre but just changing over from the usual range of private vehicles (some of which may be very modern and low impact) to diesel buses just demonstrates an inability to think things through on behalf of the authorities.
Bus companies typically cut as many corners as they legally can in operating a service, they are there to make a profit and maximising profit is normal so anyone thinking that buses would be less polluting when the numbers are increased to serve a population that has been denied their personal transport is not thinking. More large diesel vehicles stopping and starting every few yards will never be cleaner.
"system had been put together by American megacorp 3M several years back"
Modern sticky-back plastic doesn't seem to last long anymore!
As for APNR, why are there ANY untaxed cars on the road with all these cameras around?
(as opposed to up on bricks in a front garden)
What's so controversial?
about trying to reduce the amount of nasties we are putting into the atmosphere when all the scientific evidence says that they badly impact our health?
Hasn't this past year taught us that less traffic means less pollution (nasty gasses and noise)?