Introduction to UTMC

 UTMC is a UK-based initiative which provides traffic managers with open technical specifications, supporting an innovative competitive marketplace and helping systems interwork effectively.

All of our work is undertaken cooperatively with both the public highways community and the systems industry. We aim to provide practical help, avoiding excessive complexity in favour of simple, agreed approaches.

Initiated in the early 1990s by the UK Department for Transport, UTMC is now the de facto UK standard for traffic-related Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). The great majority of UK local authorities have a UTMC core to their systems.

UTMC is free for anyone to use: there are implementations across the globe. And we're always open to suggestions for improvement.

Traffic managers have an increasing range of technology systems to help them to deliver their responsibilities. It can be a challenge to get an effective system for an acceptable cost; and when different systems need to work together, there are additional issues:

How to achieve an effective competitive marketplace, and avoid supplier "lock in"

How to sustain technical innovation

How to ensure that different authorities align their demands on systems suppliers where practical

How to ensure systems can exchange data quickly, simply and cheaply.

 The core of the UTMC initiative is the UTMC Technical Specification. This is a substantial, complex and evolving library of documentation, but based on a simple philosophy:

To make use of mainstream, internet-based technology as far as practical

To set standards where useful – but only where useful: we focus on interfaces, and leave functional innovation to the creativity of suppliers

To be maintained by consensus: we want to foster practical systems suited to both suppliers and users, not to create a technical dictatorship

To be open and readily available: UTMC specifications are free to access and free of charge