Highways Agency

9th May 2008 - Highways Agency statement in response to the statistical press release published on the Department for Transport website on 8 May 2008: "Congestion on inter-urban roads - Monthly provisional estimates: March 2008"

A Highways Agency spokesperson said:

"We are working hard to tackle congestion and have made good progress, given the challenge of increasing traffic levels. We are the only highway authority in the world measuring journey time reliability. 2007-08 is the first year that we have targetted our performance on journey time reliability. Since June 2007 we have seen improvement in journey time reliability as a result of our continued investment in congestion busting measures such as technology and the Traffic Officer service.

"Over 1000 Traffic Officers are now operational on our motorways across the country, helping to get traffic moving again after incidents and we have established a network of regional traffic control centres which can pinpoint where incidents are causing congestion and deploy traffic officers or re-direct traffic. We've also invested in Active Traffic Management and hard-shoulder running on the M42, queue detection systems, ramp metering to improve the flow of traffic on to our network, as well as improved information services for our customers, such as Traffic Radio and Travel Time Variable Message signs.

"The Government is also investing heavily in major improvements to our roads, these schemes that will provide new capacity to tackle congestion in the longer-term, inevitably mean some short-term disruption during the construction phase - which is reflected in the congestion figures."

Issued by the Highways Agency press office.

Media enquiries including out of hours should be made to the Highways Agency National Press Office on 0207 081 7443.