M62 - Your Local History
A lot of finds were uncovered during the archaeological evaluation carried out for the M62 Junction 6 Improvement scheme so we thought it would be nice to provide an interactive website so you can see what we found.
Better information for your journey
The National Traffic Control Centre collects real-time information on road conditions
Don't Cross or Walk Along Motorways
The Highways Agency aims to make more people aware of the dangers of walking or crossing our motorway. We have launched a poster and radio campaign aimed at 16-25yr olds. Hopefully with our hard hitting posters, our message will come across.
Educating tomorrow's drivers
See how we are driving through key messages about safety on our network for the drivers of tomorrow.
Meet the Ancestors
Find out about the history of roads and the work the Agency does to preserve archaeological remains.
See when traffic will be lightest
Our traffic forecaster can help get you there quicker
Tackling Congestion by Influencing Travel Behaviour
Introduction
The Influencing Travel Behaviour programme is designed to promote sustainable travel and reduce congestion on England's 'strategic road network'. Through this the Agency aims to cut congestion by influencing travel behaviour, providing access to information to help people make *smarter travel choices and introducing demand management measures in areas prone to congestion.
Our strategy in taking this forward aims to balance the needs of people to travel with the available capacity of the road network. We aim to support the country's economic success whilst addressing environmental objectives. Key to achieving this is to reduce the amount of traffic on the road, in particular, the demand for private car journeys.
Congestion
Traffic Congestion seriously affects our economy, quality of life and environment. The Highways Agency's plans to improve motorways and trunk roads will help to tackle congestion. However, road building alone will not solve the problem.
The Department for Transport's congestion target challenges us to make journeys more reliable on the strategic road network. The Influencing Travel Behaviour Programme has been identified as being able to contribute to meeting this target.
Promoting Sustainable Travel
To tackle the above, the Agency is currently implementing a programme of 'smarter choices', which constitutes a series of measures designed to promote sustainable travel alternatives, majoring on the delivery of Travel Plans. The issue of sustainable travel and transport is high on the Government's transport agenda, particularly after the Stern and Eddington reports on climate, the economy and transport's role in these crucial areas. Influenced by Stern and Eddington, DfT have published a document called 'Towards a Sustainable Transport System' (Oct 07).
Working in Partnership
Effective partnership working is critical to successful outcomes. We proactively collaborate with a range of other organisations in implementing these measures on the network. These include Government Offices, Local Authorities, Regional Development Agencies, strategic partners and private sector companies. We are: -
- engaging with stakeholders such as Local Authorities, Regional Development Agencies and Government Offices and private sector stakeholders, to promote sustainable travel
- working in collaboration with key stakeholders such as the Association of Train Operating Companies, Campaign for Better Transport and the Association of Commuter Transport, with a view to promoting this programme as well as identifying particular areas of work, which would benefit from a partnership approach
- working with the business community to influence employers to achieve a real reduction in road use, including the HA highlighting the potential benefits to business of implementing Travel Plans; and
- supporting sustainable development by securing the use of travel plan initiatives as formal conditions within planning applications. See the 'Spatial Planning and Sustainable Transport' page for more information on this.
Protecting our Environment
In addition to delivering congestion and time saving benefits, "smarter choices" initiatives offer environmental benefits. Reduced trips, improved traffic flow and less stop-start driving all reduce CO2 emissions, noise levels and improve air quality. The Agency’s travel plan schemes are already delivering valuable carbon savings. The Barclaycard travel plan saved 425 Tonnes of carbon in 2006/7. The Grove Park area travel plan at Leicester is addressing an existing prioritised Air Quality Management Area (AQMA), where air quality levels already exceed EU limits.
Delivering Sustainable Development
The planning system and associated policies offer the Agency a huge opportunity to be a key enabler of sustainable development. We are proactively working in partnership with developers and planning authorities to ensure that new build does not adversely impact on our network and the importance we place upon this work cannot be underestimated. More can be found on this area of work by viewing the 'Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development' page.
Objectives and Benefits of the Influencing Travel Behaviour Programme
Smarter choices initiatives are much less expensive and can be implemented more quickly than conventional road infrastructure improvement schemes.
| Objectives | Benefit |
|---|---|
| "Promote sustainable transport choices and improve quality of life" (DfT Objective). | Greater public awareness and support achieved through local promotional work, web sites journey planning tools. Will measure some evidence of this through travel surveys. |
| To encourage use of sustainable modes. | Achieving modal shift away from Single Occupancy car trips to more sustainable alternatives. Measured through monitoring processes. |
| Promote health benefits of alternative travel and transport. | Health benefits from walking and cycling. |
| "To improve the environmental performance of transport" (DfT key task). | Positive influence on local air quality, AQMA and CO2 emissions. Some sites are in/near AQMAs. |
| Agency PSA target. Improve reliability through reduced congestion. "Improving current operation and capacity of transport networks" (DfT key task). |
Positive impact upon Agency network performance via reduced congestion and delays in the peak hour. Positive impact on Local Authority network. Will contribute to realisation of LTP2 benefits and targets. Protect future performance of the strategic road network by mitigating trip increases associated with new developments and Growth Areas. Delivery of benefit to be monitored annually. Positive impact on Local Authority network. Will contribute to future LTP2 benefits. |
| Provide local economic benefits (spatial planning based travel plans). |
Enables sustainable development. Allows locally important development that could not otherwise take place facilitating the creation of jobs to benefit local economy. |
Monitoring
The Highways Agency has developed an outcome-focussed Travel Plan monitoring strategy. This information is important to refine the approach and improve future Travel Plan performance. The process followed in our monitoring strategy is best illustrated by the diagram below:
The monitoring procedure has been broken down into six steps. Whilst each step leads to another, the process is recurring.
- Set Objectives
- Conduct Baseline Survey
- Set Targets and Indicators
- Develop and Implement Travel Plan
- Data Collection and Evaluation
- Review ATP
'Locking In' Benefits
Car Sharing or High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes
At peak times, only vehicles carrying two or more people will be able to use certain lanes. The first trial of this initiative will be on the M606/M62 in Yorkshire. More information can be found by following this link: M606/M62 in West Yorkshire.
Current Progress
By the end of March 2007, we had implemented a total of 11 Travel Plan schemes. In 2007/8 we have committed to an expanded programme of implementing 18 more, including internal Agency Travel Plan schemes. These schemes have promoted sustainable travel to 57,000 staff from 850 companies. They include various types of travel plan. In our current portfolio, residential, work place, growth area-related, freight and leisure travel plans are all featured.
Recognition
Through the ITB programme, the Agency was highly commended at the 2007 Travelwise Conference in Belfast, which was held in November.
Influencing Travel Behaviour Video
We have produced a short video, presented by John Stapleton, that explains a little more about how we are trying to reduce congestion by influencing travel behaviour.
| Available formats | Low quality (Dial-up connections) | High quality (Broadband) |
|---|---|---|
| Quicktime You need Apple's QuickTime software |
View (3.3MB) | View (10MB) |
| MPEG | View (9.2MB) |
You can also view a text-only transcript of the video.
Return to the Keep Traffic Moving section of the web site.
* 'Smarter travel choices' are techniques for influencing people's travel behaviour towards more sustainable options such as encouraging school, workplace and individualised travel planning. They also seek to improve public transport and promote services such as travel awareness campaigns, setting up websites for car share schemes, supporting car clubs and encouraging teleworking.
