Traffic warden

Ensuring traffic flows smoothly on the UK’s motorways and major trunk roads is all in a days’ work for UK Highways Agency chief Archie Robertson. But as an expanding economy continues to place ever-greater demands on the transportation infrastructure, safeguarding the reliability of the network becomes increasingly challenging. Senior Editor Ben Thompson met the UK’s traffic tsar to find out what lies on the road ahead.

“Am I seeing any innovative approaches that could be adopted here? Yes. Are we doing anything to implement those solutions? Yes. And are we working with other road network agencies? Extensively”

As CEO of the organization charged with managing, maintaining and improving the strategic road network in England, Archie Robertson is a busy man. While the roads under his jurisdiction only account for about 8000km of tarmac – roughly eight percent of the roads in the country – they are among the busiest in the world, carrying more than a quarter of the nation’s road transport traffic and about two-thirds of its freight. If Robertson and his team don’t do their jobs properly, the UK economy would, quite literally, grind to a halt.

The network represents the UK government’s single largest public investment, is currently valued at over £81 billion and provides a vital service to commerce and industry and to the lives of individuals and communities. Understandably, managing such a huge asset presents a number of key challenges. “The main issue is undoubtedly growth in the economy, which is driving an increase in the demand for transport,” explains Robertson. “On our network this probably averages only 1-2 percent per annum, but it does represent pretty steady growth.” One impact of this, he suggests, is the amount of land-use redevelopment currently being witnessed as a result of the booming economy. For instance, new Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently announced that he wanted to see three million new homes built to meet growing demand, and new land use development in sectors such as retail, leisure and industry mean that the pressure to provide a quality road network is increasing year-on-year. “Being able to support all that redevelopment with first-class transport infrastructure, without disrupting the existing networks too much, is a very great challenge for us,” he says.

So how is Robertson approaching the task? First, he’s refocused the agency so that it considers itself not so much an infrastructure organization as a service provider. “The central theme of our corporate strategy is customer service, looking particularly at road users as customers and seeking to help them with their journey,” he explains. “We think of our role now as being the network operator; not only are we managing, maintaining and improving the infrastructure and the network itself, but we are also looking at ways of helping people plan and undertake their journeys in a more constructive way. That’s one of the really fascinating things about a road network – unlike a railway, shipping or an airline network, there’s no timetable, you don’t have to buy a ticket to travel and you don’t have to follow a designated route. You choose when you want to go, you choose which way you go, you choose who goes with you – most of the network decisions are actually made by the car driver. So we recognize that our key role is to influence the decisions that those customers make.”

Easing congestion
A large part of that management role is clearly to control the number of users on the road network at peak times. In line with other parts of Europe, the number of cars on UK roads has surged over the last decade to 25 million, which Robertson concedes is causing real problems in terms of congestion and extended commute times. “People are only prepared to spend so much of their time commuting,” he says. “There are relatively few of us that want to spend more than an hour travelling to work. However, our issue is that we’re a densely populated country with very short inter-urban distances – a wealthy country with heavy demand not only for car travel, but also for goods and services that is met by light and heavy goods vehicles. More than 80 percent of our freight, for example, is delivered by road, which is a very high proportion compared to other countries in Europe.”

To meet these challenges, the agency has developed a three-pronged strategy for tackling congestion. The first thread is to build more infrastructure, particularly around congestion hot spots. “We’re spending about £1 billion a year improving a £70 billion network by adding more capacity,” says Robertson. “However, we also recognise that it is not possible to just build our way out of congestion, which is why we’re developing other approaches in tandem with adding extra capacity.”

The second thread is therefore aimed at making the existing network work better and work harder. “This is where I think we are moving into a leading position in Europe,” he continues. “Using technology and human deployment to try and make the existing concrete, tarmac and steel give us more service.” For Robertson, this involves a range of initiatives – from performing maintenance activities in such a way that keeps roads open when people need them, to deploying a traffic officer service, to using advanced technologies such as CCTV cameras and regional control centres in order to pinpoint where the traffic hotspots are. “It means using techniques to control traffic movement – perhaps preventing vehicle overtaking in some places and limiting the access rates of traffic onto motorways in others,” he says. “There is actually a whole plethora of tools and ideas – many of them new and some of them borrowed from our European colleagues – that we’re applying in that area.”

The third area is what Robertson refers to as demand management. “To most people, that means road pricing or congestion pricing, which isn’t the direct responsibility of our agency but is nonetheless a very important aspect of our strategy. We’ve got programs on demand management that control access to motorways at peak times. We also work with companies that employ large numbers of people who use the network – as well as local authorities – in order to reduce the spike of peak time travel associated with big offices working nine-to-five, which can clog up the motorway quite spectacularly.”

In many ways, it’s a strategy that’s focused on greater education and greater public information as well as new infrastructure construction, as Robertson is keen to point out. “A key element is better driver information – not only in terms of what information they get from the radio or from the variable message signs that we continue to deploy throughout the country, but also in making pre-trip planning information available, primarily through our website. We’ve also recently enhanced the pre-trip planning phase with the launch of traffic radio, a digital radio-based service that will pick up in demand as digital radio rolls out.”

Better collaboration
Of course, the challenge of how to improve mobility while at the same time limiting congestion and pollution is not unique to Britain. Indeed, Robertson concedes that there is much to be gained from talking to national road network agencies in other countries – particularly the UK’s European neighbours – to establish best practices and exchange ideas. “Am I seeing any innovative approaches in other countries that could be adopted here? Yes. Are we doing anything to implement those solutions? Yes. And are we working with other road network agencies? Extensively. However, I think we all feel there is more that we can do,” he says.

“In terms of innovation, we’re trying out a couple of ideas. As I mentioned before, motorway access management, which started in the US as ramp metering and has been used in different ways in other European countries, is one idea [see sidebar]. We’re also very excited about the trial results we’re getting from using the hard shoulder as a running lane on the M42 near Birmingham at peak times of day. We call that active traffic management, and it’s an adaptation of something the Dutch are doing.”

It’s not all one-way traffic, however. For instance, the UK has pioneered operation of a traffic officer service that employs patrols on the motorway to deal with incidents, look out for debris on the carriageway that could cause incidents and clear up anything that would otherwise cause interruptions to flow. “That service is pretty unique in a global sense, although some of the component pieces have been taken from the work that colleagues in Europe and the US have adopted.”

And it’s not just other road agencies that Robertson’s organisation is collaborating with; there’s also extensive work that goes on with both the UK government and the private sector to plan and deliver projects that meet the needs of the growing economy and map out the strategic development of the UK’s road infrastructure. “There is a great deal of private sector involvement in the execution of infrastructure development,” he says. Both in terms of infrastructure construction and maintenance, the Highways Agency’s role is primarily limited to one of government client, and all of the services are actually provided by contractors. “Around 97 percent of our operation is contracted out. When it comes to delivery, we have long-term partnerships for the maintenance of our existing network; we have collaborative contractor involvement partnership arrangements for the delivery of individual new projects (which can range from £40 million up to £500 million in total); and of course, we also use the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) extensively.” Covering both road and technology projects, the agency is now running 12 major PFIs and is currently negotiating a 13th for the widening and operation of the M25, the major orbital route around London. Robertson predicts this new project will be worth around £9 billion to the commercial sector over 35 years. “We are very dependent on the quality and motivation of the services provided by the private sector, and we work hard at those relationships to help us succeed in what we are doing,” he adds.

Robertson explains how every project has a Highways Agency project manager overseeing it. “The role is, for the most part, administrative, since all of our major contracts are either PFI – in which case all of the risk sits with the operator – or they are run on a more conventional open-book procurement basis, with the agency carrying the cost, and the client and the contractor working together to minimise the costs and the risks.”

Improving the network
On the subject of minimising risks, the agency is also working hard to improve road safety. The UK has one of the safest road networks in Europe, but the fact remains that road transport is a disturbingly high-risk activity in terms of safety. “Whilst we’ve got interim targets to reduce the number of casualties and people killed on the roads, I’m quite clear that the only right answer is not to have anybody killed or injured,” insists Robertson. Having a target helps (“it focuses everybody’s minds on coming up with solutions”) and in fact the agency is well ahead of where it had hoped to be. However, while this is encouraging, Robertson knows they must continue to look for improvements.

“There’s no doubt that the best way to tackle safety and prevent accidents is to get inside the mind of the driver and work on driver education and awareness, concentrating on more vulnerable groups like motorcyclists, young and inexperienced drivers, and company/freight drivers who do very high mileages,” he says. “We’re also making a lot of progress on the engineering of the infrastructure. First, we’ve taken the position that if somebody’s going to hit something, we need to make that object easy to hit so that it doesn’t cause too much damage. For example, we’ve done quite a lot of work on deformable lampposts and deformable road sign uprights that just fold over if a car hits them. This removes the need for an additional crash barrier, which means that drivers don’t get spun back across the road on impact.

“The other major decision that we’ve made, based on European best practices, is to replace the steel crash barriers down the centre of our motorways and dual carriageways with a continuous concrete wall, which is very effective at preventing vehicles from crossing over into the opposite carriageway on impact. Such accidents have a very high casualty count, so we’re looking to this development to help us bring these numbers down.”

It’s clear that such technology advances are having a real impact on both road safety and infrastructure improvements. “Technology is absolutely vital to us, both in finding smarter ways to design and build infrastructure and in terms of being able to come up with smarter, safer solutions,” confirms Robertson. “However, it’s also fundamental in helping us get more use out of the network, and providing better information to our customers.

“Just knowing what is happening out there is fantastically important for a network operator,” he continues. “We’ve got a network of CCTV cameras covering about 30 percent of the network, as well as a host of detection systems such as loops in the road, all connected through a fibre optic communications network that sits alongside the motorway network. This is connected to control centres that allow us to see what’s happening and take action, either by the setting of signs, the deployment of traffic officers or communication to radio stations on what should be done.”

Robertson maintains that being able to communicate where and when incidents are happening – and when they are likely to be clear – is proving very useful in helping customers plan their journeys better and conclude them with less stress and less risk of accident or injury. “None of the approaches we are using are unique inasmuch as they are often borrowed ideas from other European roads agencies, but we’ve taken the opportunity to try and put them together in an integrated way that gives us real power to monitor the network and give good information to our customers.”

A sustainable future
Ultimately, this idea of getting more use out of the network is one of the central pillars of the UK Highways Agency’s strategy moving forward – which, in turn, is part of a greater concern with the concept of sustainable development. So what is Robertson doing to promote greener, more sustainable use of the road network?

“I think there is a limit to what the agency, as a network operator, can do to help individual customers with their own production of pollutants,” he admits. “Although preventing accidents and keeping traffic flowing smoothly certainly does enable vehicles to operate more efficiently and therefore produce less pollutants and less carbon. Given this, I would say our principal focus is around the environmental impact that we can mitigate in our construction activities, and also to a certain extent in how we protect and improve the habitat of both humans and other species that live adjacent to the motorway network.” The agency is doing a number of things in this regard, including reducing the impact of noise on people that live in houses close to the network, protecting the water environment adjacent to the road system and planting up borders to enable animal species to thrive in motorway verges. It’s also focused on mitigating the impact of its construction operations. “By making sure that we recycle material wherever we possibly can when we’re building or rebuilding roads, and by trying not to either import or export too much fill material – land, soil, mulch, etc. – to or from our building sites when we are constructing new roads, we can make a big difference.”

Indeed, Robertson believes each element of his organisation’s work on sustainability is part of a larger focus on holistic road management solutions. Whether it’s easing congestion, reducing pollution, increasing safety or mitigating the impact of new infrastructure construction, each strand of the agency’s operations dovetails neatly into one core idea – making smarter choices about the use of the strategic road network. “We have a sustainable development action plan that encompasses all of those activities – not only environmental, but also social and economic,” he concludes. “And we take pride in what we’ve been able to achieve in this area.”

Infographic:
The Highways Agency is spending £1 billion a year improving a £70 billion network by adding more capacity

Infographic:
£81 billion
Estimated value of the UK’s strategic road network

 

Archie Robertson was appointed as Chief Executive of the Highways Agency in November 2003. He joined the Highways Agency from the Environment Agency for England and Wales, where he was Director of Operations and part of the Board team that initially established the Environment Agency in 1996. His day job included dealing with major floods, droughts, major pollution incidents and the environmental aspects of other events such as shipwrecks, air crashes and animal disease outbreaks. Robertson’s previous career was spent entirely in BP’s international downstream operations.

 

Timeline:
Blueprint: how to build a road

Study stage
The scheme is identified

Planning stage
Ministers approve potential scheme
Appointment of design team
Alternative routes for the scheme investigated
Public consultation including local communities and stakeholders
Effect on environment is considered in a special report
Minister approves preferred route
Develop route ideas
Draft Orders and Environmental Statement are published
Public enquiry
Independent Inspectors Report received
Decision on scheme announced by Secretary of State

Construction stage
Land acquired for the scheme
Work begins
Ecology of site monitored; plants and wildlife protected, moved and introduced
Archaeological digs to discover any historical interest
New bridges built, drainage treatment ponds installed and fences erected to reduce noise
Safety checks
New road opens to the public

Post-opening stage
Project evaluation
Compensation payment
Scheme complete