Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding from the Highways England Innovation Fund has been (a) allocated and (b) spent on developing of automated traffic cone machines and any associated technology.

Highways England has one project regarding “Automated Cone Laying” which seeks to develop a first generation fully automated cone laying vehicle which requires no personnel on the back of the vehicle. £1.133m is forecast to be spent in 2019/20 from a total approved allocation for the project of £1.27m. There is a break point at the end of this financial year after completion of live testing of the automated cone laying vehicles. No funding was spent in previous financial years on automated traffic cone machines.