Turning Traffic Data into Transport Strategy: Sunderland City Council and Compass: Locus

Local authorities manage vast quantities of operational data from their transport networks. Traffic sensors, automatic traffic counters, journey time systems, and incident records generate a continuous feed of information about how roads and streets are actually being used.

The challenge is rarely a shortage of data. It is getting that data to a place where planners can act on it quickly. Sunderland City Council is using Compass: Locus to do exactly that.

01 The problem with disconnected data

Transport planning teams in large local authorities typically draw on data from several different systems, each managed separately, each structured differently. Aggregating that data to answer a specific question about a specific corridor requires manual effort that can take days, and the effort is repeated every time a new question arises.

Testing the impact of a proposed intervention, a junction redesign, a bus priority lane, a pedestrianised street, is especially difficult. It requires not just the operational data but the spatial context that connects data points to the places they represent. Without that, scenario modelling is slow, evidence is hard to build, and decisions are harder to defend.

02 One platform, one picture

Compass: Locus brings together data from across Sunderland's traffic sensor and ATC network into a single spatial intelligence platform. Rather than treating each data source as a separate system, Compass: Locus connects everything to the places it represents, creating a coherent, queryable picture of the transport network in real time.

The platform structures the data, connects it spatially, and makes it available for analysis without manual aggregation. When a question arises about a particular corridor or junction, the data is already there.

03 Faster evidence, better decisions

With the operational data and spatial context already in place, the Sunderland transport planning team can test interventions and compare scenarios in a fraction of the time it previously took. A proposed change can be modelled against real network data, with the spatial relationships already embedded, making it straightforward to see the likely effects before anything is built.

The output is evidence that planners can present with confidence: grounded in live data, spatially accurate, and reproducible. Compass: Locus does not replace the expertise of the planning team. It gives that expertise the data foundation it needs to work at full speed.