Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Looking Forward

Reliability

We will implement a programme of delivery actions that tackle unreliable journeys on the strategic road network. Seven programme areas contain a total of over 30 measures designed to reduce congestion. Some of the key interventions will be: 

• Unplanned incidents: reduce incident investigation times through the use of GPS-enabled collision investigation equipment provided to the police;
• Enhanced Incident Support Units will operate on five of our routes managed through 'Design, Build, Finance and Operate' (DBFO) contracts;
• Roadworks management: use Quick-change moveable barriers to minimise the impact of major roadworks;
• Technology: we will implement new technology to manage traffic flow with better intelligent capability;
• Heavy goods vehicles: we will distribute a further 60,000 Fresnel lenses to left hand drive HGVs on ferries and at ports.

Major projects

We will be opening two schemes to traffic in 2009-10; we will start work on six schemes, three of which will be Managed Motorways projects that make use of the hard shoulder as a running lane; we will begin work on widening the M25 between junctions 16 and 23s and 27 and 30, and start work on improving the A46 between Newark and Widmerpool. We will be enhancing our capability by:

• Introducing better defined performance measures for our suppliers
• Completing the establishment of our new Commercial Division and providing commercial capability training for our staff
• Extending and improving our use of earned value management techniques
• Reviewing and improving our Project Control Framework using lessons learned to date.

Safety

We will continue to reduce accidents through measures such as new roads and improvements, signing and road marking and effective traffic calming measures.

New programmes for 2009-10 include road safety guidance for elderly drivers and disabled road users, and a programme to encourage young pedestrians to treat the high speed network with more care.

We will continue our 'Respect for Road Workers' campaign to encourage safer driving behaviour through road works.

Maintenance

We will continue to implement our integrated asset management programme, carrying out further analysis and improvement work to increase the robustness and reliability of our decision support tools, and improve the data we hold about the network.

We will be introducing the world's first Traffic Speed Deflectometer vehicle to survey structural condition of the road pavement, avoiding the need to close roads while carrying out this work.

We will continue the upgrading of our fleet of winter service vehicles.

Informing road users

We will:

• develop our website to include new gateway pages for our traffic information and road projects sections;
• introduce an enhanced new look to the Traffic England pages of our website;
• work with authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the use of our DAB digital Traffic Radio service;
• expand the number of information points, where customers can access real time traffic information, to venues such as ports, airports and major visitor attractions;
• launch a project to deliver our key online services to mobile platforms;
• expand the coverage of variable message signs displaying travel time information.

Environment

We will review our overall strategic approach to the environment, and on specific elements of our programme we will:

• Cultural heritage - update our guidance on design solutions for archaeology, historic landscape and built heritage.
• Nature conservation - consolidate our Biodiversity Action Plan to complement and support the objectives of nature conservation bodies.
• Noise -work closely with DEFRA to implement the requirements of the EU Environmental Noise Directive; develop a five-year noise action plan.
• Water quality and drainage - publish new guidance implementing new water quality assessment techniques and drainage design guidance.
• Sustainable development - publish our third action plan.

Carbon emissions

We will reduce the carbon dioxide emissions, compared with the 2008-09 carbon footprint, from: 

• the main Highways Agency offices and administrative business travel by 5%; and
• the energy supply for network lighting by at least 600 tonnes.

We will begin looking at applying carbon considerations in the investment decision making process. We will reduce carbon emissions by switching off road lighting between midnight and 5am at six motorway sites in Southern England.

Planning

We will continue working closely with regional and local planning bodies and developers to find sustainable transport solutions that support housing and development; and we will work with local authorities and businesses to influence travel behaviour by implementing more voluntary travel plans.

Customer satisfaction

We will deliver a high level of road user satisfaction.

Efficiency

We will deliver cumulative efficiency improvements of £127 million by the end of 2009-10, contributing to a target of £144 million by the end of 2010-11; and our programme will be delivered within our allocated administration budget over the Spending Review period, which requires cumulative efficiency savings of 12.6% by the end of 2009-10.