Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Managing the Network

Our Traffic Officer Service

Day-to-day management of traffic on the motorway network is undertaken by our Traffic Officer Service. The Service comprises around 1,600 traffic officers and control room staff working out of seven regional control centres and 31 outstations. The transfer of responsibilities for traffic management from the police was completed in October 2008 with the granting of statutory powers to arrange removal and disposal of abandoned and broken down vehicles from the motorway network. These powers are now used in all 7 Highways Agency regions.

Traffic officers operate a 24/7 service and deal with over 26,000 incidents each month, aiming to reach over 80% of these within 20 minutes. The time taken to clear incidents has been reduced through detailed operational analysis and planning, and improved working practices with the police and other emergency services. Roads are reopened more quickly, and the impact of incident-related congestion reduced.

Road users are increasingly recognising the assistance provided by the Traffic Officer Service, and feedback has been very positive, with frequent praise for on-road and control room staff.

Managed motorways

Traffic Officers and the regional control centres will play a pivotal role in supporting the delivery of managed motorways, where the hard shoulder is used as an active running lane at congested periods.

Hard shoulder running works by installing technology to monitor and control the flow of traffic, and uses electronic signs to warn drivers of safety hazards, allowing the safe use of the hard shoulder.

We have made good progress applying the learning from the successful operation on the M42 of Active Traffic Management (ATM) and use of the hard shoulder as a running lane. The M42 pilot showed that, at a cost significantly lower than conventional widening schemes, benefits can be made to traffic flows, journey time reliability, and reduced emissions. A significant proportion of the national strategic roads programme announced by the Secretary of State for Transport in January 2009 is made up of hard shoulder running schemes on our major motorways and key trunk roads.

The extension of ATM to further sections of motorway around Birmingham began in August 2008 and the first phase of this was completed in December 2009.

Reliability

Congestion on the network leads to greater unreliability in journey times. The majority of road users have an anticipated arrival time when setting out, particularly where trips are to and from work, or leisure trips such as to sporting events with specific start times.

We have therefore continued working to improve the reliability of journeys by making progress with our Reliability Delivery Plan. The Delivery Plan consists of a programme of actions aimed at minimising the increase in journey time unreliability, building on existing programmes and services, and containing new services that we will deliver over the next three years. The Delivery Plan consists of more than 30 measures designed to reduce congestion so as to improve reliability, and covers many aspects of our work on managed motorways, managing incidents and information services. The programme has been implemented effectively during 2008-09, with delays now at their lowest level since monitoring began four years ago. The reliability measure shows an improvement of about 10% since 2007-08. This has been helped by the 1% fall in traffic levels between 2007 and 2008, which reflects the economic downturn.

Details of some of the key initiatives making up the Delivery Plan are set out below.

Dealing with incidents

Our traffic officers now deal with all aspects of incidents where the police are not involved, improving the time taken to clear incidents and restore normal service, reducing the impact of incident related congestion, and reducing the risk of secondary incidents.

Incident detection

Work began in 2008-09 on extending the coverage of the Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling (MIDAS), from 1,200 to 1,400kms. The system works by detector loops in the road surface providing live traffic information on a combination of gantry and verge-mounted electronic message signs.

We delivered 120km during the year with the system now providing queue protection and smoothing traffic flow to over 45% of the motorway network. The project will be completed over the next two years.

Reducing delays at road works

The use of average speed cameras through road works improves compliance with speed limits, smoothes traffic flows, and reduces delays. So we are now able in many cases to adopt a 50 mph speed limit rather than 40 mph through major schemes. And the use of quick-change moveable barriers minimise the impact of roadworks by reducing the time required to install and remove traffic management measures.

Influencing travel behaviour

Our wide ranging Influencing Travel Behaviour programme helps road users to avoid congestion, and has the broader aim of reducing congestion at source. We improve journey reliability for road users by the following means.

• We provide timely, accurate information allowing road users to make more informed choices, explained in more detail below.
• We work with developers and planning bodies to find sustainable transport solutions that will support housing and development - the Corporate Social Responsibility section of this report contains more details.
• We reduce the load on the network by promoting journey planning and car sharing; we encourage alternative forms of travel such as cycling, where feasible, and the use of public transport, and we champion homeworking and videoconferencing.

These sustainable travel initiatives help cut congestion on our roads and reduce emissions.

Infrastructure improvements

Our programme of Local Network Management Schemes provide smaller scale engineering solutions to specific problems at a local level. Costing less than £10 million each, we delivered over 200 of these schemes during 2008-09.

Managing heavy goods vehicles

This year we distributed some 60,000 Fresnel lenses to left hand drive HGVs, on ferries and at ports, to reduce the number of occasions when they side swipe other vehicles. This effective, low cost initiative helps reduce the number of minor accidents and the consequent delay.

Better informed drivers

Quality information services are crucial in helping road users make informed choices when planning journeys and whilst travelling on the network. We therefore continue to develop sophisticated systems for gathering and relaying information about current road conditions to road users. We undertook a major  upgrade of our information services this year, the main enhancements explained below:

The Highways Agency website

Our website provides a range of traffic information services for our customers.  the site has become increasingly heavily used, with around 10 million page impressions a month. During the severe weather of February 2009 a normal month's worth of visitors accessed the website in less than a day.

Highways Agency Information Line (HAIL)

HAIL is an established 24 hour information line which provides information on all aspects of our business. It is an effective single point to report debris or damage on the road, or to contact any part of the Agency.

Traffic Radio

Our Traffic Radio service launched on DAB digital radio in June 2007. The service provides a wide-ranging real time traffic information service, with national traffic headlines and six regional services updated every ten minutes at peak times. In 2008-09 we expanded Traffic Radio broadcast content to the internet, and locally onto 1386AM at the Birmingham NEC to aid journey planning from events leaving the centre.

Electronic variable message signs (VMS)

The information on our VMS has been enhanced to include the travel time for vehicles between specified points on the network. The information is calculated automatically by our traffic monitoring equipment. This year we also successfully experimented with displaying travel times on mobile electronic variable message signs through major road works. Better certainty of conditions ahead results in greater driver satisfaction and results in improved behaviour.

Traffic camera images

In addition to making these available on our website, we are providing streamed CCTV images from more than 1,000 cameras located on our network, through the web, to approved websites such as the BBC and regional media groups. The images provide customers with an easily accessible view of network conditions before they set out.

Information points

We have installed information points where customers can access real-time traffic information at some motorway service areas. We will be adding a further 180 units, extending the service to other venues such as shopping centres, ports and airports.