Highways Agency

• Traffic Incident Management Bulletin

April 2007

Introduction

One of the Highways Agency's key objectives is to "reduce congestion and improve reliability" for all customers on the strategic road network. The Agency has to contend with a variety of issues that pose problems in achieving this objective, one of the major causes being non-recurrent congestion i.e. road traffic accidents and incidents. Therefore through implementing procedures that enable incidents to be cleared as quickly and efficiently as possible, it enables traffic conditions to return to "normal" as soon as possible. 

Unfortunately the Agency cannot prevent all incidents from occurring on the network, therefore limiting the impact of them is essential. It has been identified that a major contributory factor in assisting in the minimisation of congestion would be the reduction in the verification / response periods of an incident. Through notifying required incident responders as early as possible, their functions can be performed earlier in the incident timeline; having a major impact upon the overall incident duration. The likely incident responders this will have an impact on are the following:

• recovery agents
• incident support units
• environmental specialists
• RSPCA

Interlinked to the above, is the Highways Agency Traffic Incident Management (TIM) project to enhance the service provided by Incident Support Units (ISUs) in supporting the Traffic Officer Service on the network.

The enhancement programme consists of the following three elements:

• improved response times on certain parts of the network for the service providers primary response vehicle
• improved contractual response times for the service providers secondary response services
• immediate despatch of the service provider to incidents

This new service is being introduced to provide the Police and Traffic Officers with the necessary support at an earlier stage to assist in clearing up incidents more effectively and efficiently in order to relieve congestion and delay in the quickest possible time. There will be no change of the current roles and responsibilities for either Traffic Officers or ISUs.

The Agency introduced the immediate despatch of ISUs to incidents on the network from 2nd April 2007. A Briefing Note was prepared and supplied the background to the decision and some guidance on implementing the revised response from ISUs.

Role of the Service Provider, ISU at incident scenes

Area Management Memorandum (AMM) 39/03 defines the Agency’s purpose of the current ISU service.

“The purpose of an ISU is to minimise disruption to road users, by providing a safe and timely response to incidents and quicker clearance of blocked lanes.”

ISUs are the primary response from Service Providers that supply incident scenes with extra asset maintenance expertise and resource. Their role and responsibilities include performing the following tasks:

• removal of incident debris
• assess infrastructure damage
• undertake infrastructure repairs
• provide additional traffic management equipment

The ISU service is the primary response in areas of the strategic road network where the Traffic Officer Service (TOS) is not yet operational i.e. all purpose trunk roads (APTR). In these cases, they take on a leading role for the Agency at incident scenes, acting as a communication interface between the Agency and incident scene and providing information on the condition of the network.

Strategy for the Immediate Despatch of ISUs

The current practice within incident management is that scenes must be assessed by either Traffic Officers or Police prior to further incident responders being called to the scene. However, this will be adapted to allow for ISUs to be immediately despatched to particular incident scenes alongside Police and Traffic Officers.

Through despatching the ISU immediately with Police and Traffic Officer patrols, ISUs will be able to assess and commence works earlier in the incident timeline in support of the Police and Traffic Officers who will be in control of the incident. As a result this will assist in reducing the overall duration of the incident and in relieving incident related congestion. This demonstrates the projects alignment to the Agency’s corporate objective; “reduce congestion and improve reliability”.

For further information on the Agency’s corporate objectives, please visit the What we do page.

Developed guidance for the revised approach of ISUs

The Agency has prepared guidance to the revised response of ISUs, which has been supplied to TOS to provide an understanding of the resource requirements of a particular incident - including when immediate despatch of ISUs should be invoked. The guidance has been prepared based on three separate categories:

• Immediate Despatch - a request shall be made to the Service Providers Network Control Centres for the immediate despatch of an ISU to an incident
• No Despatch: TOS Dealing - the incident can be dealt with by the Traffic Officer Service and no ISU is required
• Notification - the Service Providers Network Control Centre shall be informed of the incident and the necessary action shall be taken by their operator

Upon the implementation of immediate despatch of ISUs, there will be occasions when they are first to arrive at the incident scene. In such instances, the ISU will observe existing practice and procedures, as stated in “Chapter 8 under Emergency Traffic Management on High Speed Roads”. ISUs have no legislative powers to stop and direct traffic and under Chapter 8 ISU staff should be trained in the implementation of traffic management on a live carriageway and any other procedures needed to deal with incidents they are required to attend. Protection of the scene at some incidents is vital to preserve evidence and all other action must be secondary at the initial stage. The scene should be kept as sterile as possible and the ISU await the arrival of the Traffic Officer Service and Police and then act under their instruction.

For further information about this article please contact the TIM team.