Skip to main content

Automated and connected vehicles in NE England Workshop, July 2026

Written by Professor Phil Blythe, Newcastle University

Newcastle University organised a workshop to showcase all the activities that have been going on in this space in the North East and Tees Valley. It illustrates that we have the ambition, the expertise, the partners and the ability to bring together complex projects, develop an understanding of the industry and/or social need and with our technical partners implement demonstrations that can be evaluated to provide evidence to inform business cases and that tricky move toward commercialisation.

Key use cases based upon recent projects funded by Innovate UK and DSIT were showcased including what we are working on at the Nissan/Logisteed, Port of Tyne, the A19, the City of Sunderland as well as those at Teesside Airport and across the TVCA.  This progression in projects from ideas, to proof on concept and a move towards commercialisation show that we are potentially on the cusp of moving towards developing much larger programmes that can meet the challenges we need to address as a region to support economic development and show (through doing) that we can innovate future transport solutions and turn them into reality.  

A comment, towards the end of the workshop from Darren Capes sums this up, “I was struck by just how much demonstrable stuff is happening in the NE, as opposed to the vapourware we often see elsewhere.”.

The last session of the day was a panel discussion where we tried to identify what we should do as a region moving forward what grand challenges we could address and where potential funding could come from. I'd just like to summarise some of the key points from that panel discussion and from the contributions from the audience as a ‘to do’ list of actions to take away from the event:

  • ensure there is more and better dissemination and comms about what we are doing and achieving in the North East and TCVA;
  • engage with central government more effectively
  • demonstration and enabling projects which integrate and show the technologies must have funding to run for sufficient time to ensure there is a credible evaluation which can inform on future business cases and scheme design;
  • explore the opportunities NEMSA and TCVA to work together on connected vehicles and ultimately road automation learning from each other's implementations and operating operations of the their UTMC and related smart traffic management.  Funding for connected services may be forthcoming from DfT;
  • bring key parties together to develop the grand challenge of smart traffic management supporting logistics and ultimately automated logistics on the route from Nissan to the Port of Tyne and beyond
  • understand the off public road opportunities such as the private road automated logistics between Logisteed and Nissan and at Port of Tyne and Teesside Airport as exemplars that can be scaled and transferred elsewhere;
  • recognise that short distance automated shuttle buses services, as previously demonstrated in Sunderland, have the potential to deliver connectivity use cases across the northeast as demonstrated Northumberland Healthlink feasibility study;
  • ensure our key assets such as UTMC, Urban Observatory and NICCAL are promoted and capabilities brough together
  • a strong view that region could benefit from a some from some sort of mobility institute or innovation centre which covers future mobility (noting something was included in this in the original NECA business case); and
  • find a mechanism whereby we can coordinate how the region is represented at key international events and in particular it was discussed the imperative to have a North East Presence at the ITS World Congress that will be held in Birmingham in October 2026

Download the agenda for the event (PDF: 28KB).