Transforming transport planning with live spatial intelligence

The challenge

Transport planning teams in large local authorities face a fundamental data challenge: vast quantities of operational data (from traffic sensors, automatic traffic counters (ATCs), journey time systems, and incident records) sit in disconnected systems that are difficult to aggregate, analyse, or act on at speed.

Testing the impact of a proposed transport intervention (a new junction layout, a bus lane, a pedestrianised street) traditionally requires significant manual effort to gather the relevant data, model the scenarios, and present findings in a form that supports strategic decision-making.

The solution

Sunderland City Council's transport planning team is using Compass: Transport to bring together data from across their traffic sensor and ATC network into a single spatial intelligence platform. The platform structures and connects operational data to the places and corridors it represents, making it queryable, visualisable, and ready for analysis.

Transport interventions can be modelled and tested in context, with the underlying data and spatial relationships already in place. The team can rapidly explore the implications of proposed changes, compare scenarios, and build evidence-based cases for investment decisions.

Rather than replacing the expertise of the planning team, Compass: Transport amplifies it, giving planners the tools to do in hours what previously took weeks of manual data wrangling.