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Peter Routledge's paper at the JCT Symposium 2026 showed how the Digital Controller Interface Standard (DCIS) programme is turning established traffic signal information into linked, validated and reusable data, with practical tools now demonstrating what that could mean for modelling, optimisation and connected mobility.
Traffic signal engineering has no shortage of standards. Products, safety, regulation and controller behaviour are all well covered. The gap, Routledge told delegates at the JCT Symposium 2026, is that there still isn’t a consistent way to represent a site, its topography, its controller configuration and its live operational state as one coherent, machine-readable set of information.
That is the challenge behind DCIS, a practical data standard for traffic signal sites which has moved substantially beyond the static files presented to the same audience in 2023. Routledge was careful to stress that the work is not intended to replace controller standards, manufacturers’ configuration tools or established design processes. Its purpose is to make information that already exists available in a consistent, validated format, so it can be published, connected and reused.
The proposed file set has four parts. An Intersection Summary Document provides the structured site list and index. MAPEM, an established European standard, describes the physical layout and permitted movements. E2500 captures the static controller configuration, while a live counterpart reports what the controller is doing at a particular moment. A common intersection identifier ties those elements together, allowing a consuming system to recognise that they describe the same site.
This sounds deceptively simple. In practice, relevant information is scattered across drawings, PDFs, configuration packages, authority records and proprietary supplier formats. Much of it can be read by a person but not reliably reused by a machine. DCIS aims to turn those fragments into linked data products with enough structure to support validation and automation.
Routledge’s presentation became most persuasive when it moved from the schema to the things that structured data can enable. The project team has built a proof-of-concept workbench capable of deriving an E2500 representation from controller configurations used in the UK supply chain. Direct generation by manufacturers’ software remains the preferred route because that is closest to the source of truth, but the workbench demonstrates that useful conversion is already possible.
Nobody claimed the conversion was complete. Controllers differ in capability and granularity, while older source material varies greatly in quality. Research undertaken through an Imperial College MSc project has also examined whether existing CAD and PDF drawings can be converted into MAPEM data. The conclusion was familiar, in that extraction can work, but disciplined source content, consistent naming and suitable resolution matter. A flattened or poorly structured drawing makes automation harder, regardless of how sophisticated the extraction tool becomes.
The same data can remove repetitive engineering work. Routledge recalled the laborious task of deriving interstage timings when adding sites to UTC. An E2500 file already contains much of the information required, including phase relationships and clearance data, making it possible to calculate ranges and potentially pass the result into another system through a simple companion file.
The team has gone further by building a controller simulator that consumes E2500 files. Its displays will look familiar to signal engineers, with phase indications, detectors and manual controls. More important is the live data viewer, which exposes details such as current, previous and next stages, time in stage, transition status, detector demands and the reason a stage is being held. This offers a much richer operational picture than conventional system-wide feeds, which often reveal only a small subset of what the controller knows.
A further demonstration linked the simulator to SUMO, the open-source traffic modelling platform. Controller state flowed to the model, while simulated traffic returned detector calls. The exercise was not presented as a finished product, but as evidence that a common representation can bridge controller logic and modelling without rebuilding that logic separately for every platform. The browser-based version also showed that the simulation engine can run independently of the original desktop application and feed other interfaces.
Useful data must also be trustworthy. Routledge identified several key requirements, including that it has to be valid, legitimate, sufficiently current, published by an authoritative source and accessible to appropriate users. Schema checks can confirm whether required fields exist and whether values have the correct type or range, but they cannot establish every relationship within the data. Semantic checks, curation and a continuing update process will therefore be essential.
Highway authorities sit across much of this landscape because they hold the site records, topographic information and operational requirements. Adoption will fail if it creates another disruptive manual task, so the intended process must fit established workflows. Site lists should be capable of automated conversion into the intersection summary format, mapping tools should combine structured drawings with sources such as OpenStreetMap, and E2500 should ultimately come from supplier configuration software rather than manual authoring.
Questions from the floor exposed the practical tension. Manufacturers wanted to know when they could access the tools and how they could contribute. Routledge said the software is currently held in a private repository, with an intention to use open-source licensing, although no release route has been confirmed. The team still needs to decide which components are mature enough to share and how confidence can be maintained as access widens.
A local authority delegate offered the other side of the problem. Greater Manchester has around 2,500 signal installations, and staff cannot spend days manually transferring basic records into a new system. The response was that unique identifiers must work nationally and comply with the European structure, but existing asset-management data should make automated generation achievable. Funding remains a constraint, yet the aspiration is to have both technical tooling and supporting procedures ready when implementation can move forward.
Connected and autonomous vehicles provide the strategic backdrop, although the near-term case is broader and arguably more compelling. Better data could support stage prediction, optimisation, simulation, interoperability and more efficient network operation. It could also reduce the repeated translation of controller behaviour into bespoke formats for each new application.
Three years ago, the project could show files and ask the industry to imagine their value. This time, Routledge could show those files driving simulators, live viewers and modelling tools. The crucial next step is no longer simply to finish the schemas. It is to build confidence, secure participation and embed the processes that keep the information accurate throughout its life.
For the traffic signals community, the proposition is straightforward. A shared digital language will not remove the complexity of signal control, but it can stop that complexity being rediscovered and re-entered every time someone wants to use the data. If authorities, suppliers and practitioners engage with the next phase, DCIS could turn information already held across the industry into a reusable operational asset.
Routledge also clarified that the E2500 is NOT another version (or replacement of) the ITS1827 Traffic Signal Controller, Work Specification and Configuration Forms (colloquially 141s, 1827s or 2500s). These forms provide the human interface to load new site design information and will continue to be supported and updated by ITS Now and are free to download from: https://itsnow.org/publications.html
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