Highways Agency

NETWORK

DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING MEASURES AIMED AT MAKING BETTER USE OF THE MOTORWAY AND TRUNK ROAD NETWORK AND INTEGRATION WITH OTHER MODES

CCTV images relayed to the Traffic Control Centre in Chigwell, Essex.    

An operator at the Traffic Control Centre in Chigwell, Essex.

The M4 bus lane has been successful in reducing journey times for all vehicles during peak periods.

THE HIGHWAYS AGENCY IS COMMITTED TO DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING MEASURES AIMED AT MAKING BETTER USE OF THE MOTORWAY AND TRUNK ROAD NETWORK AND IMPROVING INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TRANSPORT NETWORKS AS PART OF ITS NETWORK OPERATOR ROLE.

The £187 million programme in 1999/2000 encompassed a range of projects, covering network communications, smaller-scale roadworks delivering local improvements - particularly safety improvements - and a programme of research and development.

The Agency achieved the key targets for delivering smaller scale schemes and for progressing the Traffic Control Centre. The Agency invited tenders for this project which will have a major impact on the way trunk roads are managed and play a vital part in the Agency's strategy for improving driver information services and traffic management across the network.

The Traffic Control Centre project will build on and link existing local systems. One such system is the new electronic motorway message system called TARDIS (Thelwell Area Driver Information System) installed in Cheshire. The preparatory work for TARDIS is complete. It will become fully functional in spring 2001 to give up-to-the-minute traffic information on the M6, M62 and M56 motorways around Warrington. It will also give information on alternative routes to ease congestion on this busy part of the network. Another local system is the new £5m traffic surveillance project enabling Bedfordshire Police to monitor 24 miles of the M1 motorway in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras have been placed at strategic positions along the route between Junctions 10 and 14, allowing the police to monitor hold-ups and congestion, pin-pointing problems immediately to improve responses to incidents.

We also launched a revised Toolkit of measures to help deliver the Government's policy on motorways and other trunk roads. It includes technological innovations to reduce congestion, protect the environment and improve safety for all road users.

The first-ever bus lane on a motorway in England was opened in June 1999, dedicated exclusively to coaches, buses and taxis along a busy stretch of the M4 heading into London from Heathrow Airport. The scheme helps encourage the use of public transport for journeys between the airport and Central London by removing a bottleneck for all vehicles at a point where the M4 narrows from three lanes to two, frequently causing long queues. Independent monitoring by the Transport Research Laboratory showed that during the morning rush-hour, time savings for buses and taxis averaged three and a half minutes. But there have been benefits for all users at peak hours with other vehicles saving on average one minute during the evening rush hour and on Sunday evenings.

Other pilot projects have been carried out to show that where there is a viable rail alternative to the car, a concerted, well-conducted campaign can change travel habits. Building on the first trial in Essex to reduce congestion on the busy A12 into London by promoting improved rail services from Chelmsford, two other road-to-rail campaigns have been successful in Norfolk and Newcastle. Encouraging travellers to make more use of local train services is helping to ease peak-time congestion on busy roads.

The pioneering Travelwise centre in Nottingham - co-funded by the Agency - has also proved a notable success since it was opened. Travelwise is the first venture of its kind in Europe and is run by the Agency in partnership with the county and city councils and BBC Radio Nottingham. CCTV pictures of congestion are carried on the website which is supported by a telephone hotline and up to 31 bulletins a day on Radio Nottingham. The bulletins provide information about conditions on local roads and trunk roads, in car parks and park and ride sites, and the availability of bus and rail services. In its first three months the centre received more than 3,000 phone calls and 20,000 visits to its website. 

Case Study

Special events require special solutions. 1999/2000 saw two "once in a lifetime" events that occupied the minds of Highways Agency staff - the solar eclipse and the dawn of the new Millennium.

Severe congestion was threatened by the possibility of more than a million visitors seeking to drive to South-west England to view the total solar eclipse on 11 August 1999. Working in partnership with local authorities, the police and others, potential chaos was avoided as the Highways Agency and its partners implemented a Strategic Traffic Management Plan for the event. Included in the plan were measures to maximise network capacity, provide real time travel information, contingency plans for traffic management and a media campaign. The Agency's advice - don't travel on the day, come early, stay late and use public transport if you can - was followed by thousands of eclipse seekers who took advice to travel at off-peak times. The campaign helped achieve a big swing to off-peak travel into the South West in the five days leading to the eclipse. Other measures, including the rescheduling of maintenance and the acceleration of work to complete improvements to the A30 between Honiton and Exeter ahead of schedule, ensured that delays were kept to a minimum.

Modern road travel is dependent on a supporting network of computer systems that help control equipment such as lighting and traffic lights, motorway warning and variable message signs, emergency telephones and cameras, and tunnel ventilation systems. Millennium Bug problems with any one of these systems could have resulted in severe disruption to users of the motorway and trunk road network and, more importantly, compromised the safety of the network and its users. A carefully planned £7.5 million programme of checking, reprogramming and testing all the Agency's computer systems ensured that they all worked faultlessly on 1 January 2000 and that safety standards were not compromised.