Highways Agency

• Traffic Incident Management Bulletin

March 2007

The Traffic Incident Management Team identifies short and long term projects and initiatives that can benefit incident management techniques. A combination of these will assist the Agency’s objective of “relieving congestion” on there network.

Upon the Agency identifying that 25% of congestion on the network was the result of incidents, it has been recognised that response times are critical to ensuring that congestion is minimised through providing accurate location information to the travelling public.

The Agency has made major investment in technology to aid incident management, an example being emergency roadside telephones (ERT) being fitted with location identification equipment to assist control centre staff in identifying caller locations accurately.

However, with mobile telephones now being used as the primary incident reporting source, the ERT location identification facility is rarely used and there is currently not a similar feature on mobile telecommunications. This has resulted in the Agency being heavily reliant on individual’s personal knowledge of the network, which can prove to be tricky especially on featureless motorways, this has consequently led to heavily delayed response times.

Supplying clear, accurate location information is essential to the coordination of the emergency services response. Instances where the public have misread marker post information have previously resulted in speed or lane restrictions being set in the wrong area. The delay in providing this warning to travellers could take up to 30 minutes. 

Driver Location signs are currently being piloted by the Highways Agency to assist in providing key location information to the public.

The signs are positioned on the near side verge of the road at every 500 metres, however this can vary to 400 and 300 metres dependent on the positioning of particular motorway infrastructure e.g. bridges, this is to make sure the signs are clearly visible.

What do the signs look like?

The information featured on each sign is detailed below:

Top Row - The motorway route number

Middle Row - The direction the road user is travelling

Bottom Row - The precise location on the route

The middle row on the sign is used as the carriageway identifier which assists in precisely pinpointing incident locations and the direction the person is travelling in. Further to this, H, K, L and M are to be used on slip roads dependent on the location.

The precise location on route (bottom row) is the distance from a pre defined point on the network measured in kilometres, this supplies the emergency services with an approximate measurement of where the incident is to within 500 metres. This can assist in selecting the most appropriate access roads to the incident.
 
Driver Location signs are non-prescribed and require authorisation from the Department of Transport (DfT) which is done through the Safety, Standards and Research (SSR) function of the Highways Agency. SSR has recently confirmed approval of the sign specification and is currently seeking national authorisation from DfT for their use, upon receipt of this, a Chief Highway Engineer (CHE) memorandum will be issued incorporating all the above information.

Driver Location signs are currently being trialled on the M25, sections of the M6 in Cheshire and on several all purpose trunk roads in the Midlands. These trials were to assess the sign size and longitudinal spacing of the signs. During these trials different size signs were used to examine their readability on both three and four lane carriageways.

The TIM programme will deliver a further 3000 signs on the Highways Agency network during the upcoming financial year commencing April 2007. The signs are to be strategically distributed on “priority routes” which have been pre-identified across the country. The delivery of the signs will be managed by the Highways Agencys Area Performance Teams. 

How will the information be communicated to the public?

Promoting and communicating the function of the signs is central to them being successful. The public need to be fully aware of the three pieces of information on them so they can then communicate accurate locations to control rooms. The current strategy to disseminate this information will be done through a national press launch which will publicise the purpose of the signs. This will be further supported by local press notices through regional media.

Aside from using external communication methods the Highways Agency will also be distributing leaflets and information cards on driver location signs to drivers within areas of installed signage. They also plan to display pop-up posters in prominent locations frequented by drivers, the proposed locations include the following:

• motorway service areas
• trunk road service areas 
• large offices near the M25

All staff working on the Highways Agency Information Line (HAIL) and from Regional Control Centre will be briefed on responding to queries from the public regarding driver location signs.

Due to the programme still being in its early days it is difficult to give a fully rounded assessment of the impact of driver location signs on the network. However, the initial results of the trial by Faber Maunsell indicate that overall response times have on average improved by one minute .

According to the service providers in Area 10, the signs have been highly successful and gone down very well with category one responders who have begun to attend scenes much quicker as a result of the “better” location information passed through the communication process.

Paul Williams, Atkins Area 10 said “the signs have enabled more accurate information to be communicated to control rooms so the response can be sent directly to the scene. From a response perspective the signs have assisted emergency services in locating incident scenes through providing accurate location advice on the carriageway.”