The Union has designed and built a major new website for Government agency Transport Scotland. The new Traffic Scotland website [ https://www.traffic.gov.scot ] is the result of almost three years of work by the agency, working in close collaboration with the client team. 

The site is the official hub for all data for Scotland’s main trunk road network. The agency’s challenge was to present a vast number of data sets and intelligence to all of Scotland’s road users; every day, on demand, in real time. 

The whole project was user-led; this required numerous rounds of insight gathering by the agency’s planning team along with extensive rounds of UX research and user testing. The finished site has an incredible array of data on Scotland’s road network; from traffic congestion to live camera views, roadworks, closures, EV charging points, latest incidents, and even the salt treatment on roads for the winter. The site also has a sophisticated route and journey planner.

The project had to meet with the public sector’s demanding DSSS standards, to ensure best value for public money. A further challenge was technical; the site relies on well over 100 data points, some of which are updated live, requiring careful integration, to ensure the site is both robust and future-proof. 

The site is an essential information provider to a wide range of audiences, gathering and distributing vital data about the trunk and motorway networks. It helps keep road users up-to-date on issues as they arise. It also able to provide updates in advance. It aims to help reduce disruption and congestion, making the roads safer for everyone.

As the Traffic Scotland service is a ‘national infrastructure service’ it needs to be fully available 24/7. The Union built the site to run on a high-availability platform; a cluster of web servers, load balancers, application firewalls and redundancy servers. The site needs to keep running; come rain, shine or anything worse.

The Traffic Scotland site has only just been launched, however there are already some impressive performance results. The ‘Travel News’ section has just been qualified by the prestigious ‘Google Discover’ platform, and the site is performing at +137% average clickthrough rate from search.