Highways England

A more targeted approach to dealing with the automotive industry which has the biggest effect on transport emissions is needed; rather than an overall reduction in average levels of harmful pollutants, according to a meeting held by the ITS (UK) Smart Environment Interest Group. The event featured experts using Intelligent transport systems (ITS) to help improve the environment.

Highways England (HE) has begun piloting a £7 million ($9 million) project to reduce congestion at the Croft Interchange – where junction 21a of the M6 meets junction 10 of the M62, near Warrington, Cheshire. The project aims to provide drivers with smoother and more reliable journey times.

60.3% of the 2,000 road safety professionals who attended the premier highway event at Highways UK revealed in a survey that new technologies and road safety innovations are vital to improving driver behaviour and road safety. However, 44% of the attendees are not adopting new road safety innovations today, according to the latest research conducted by Clearview Intelligence (CI).

56% of 1,727 drivers questioned in an annual survey believe that congestion has worsened on UK major roads, which carries 65% of all traffic, despite them comprising only 13% of the country’s road network. The findings from the survey have been presented by the RAC’s Report on Motoring.

To slash road causalities by 40% by 2020 and combat last year’s 8 tyre-related fatalities and 120 serious injuries, Highways England (HE) has revealed a series of initiatives to mark the end of the Tyre Safety month. Working with the NHS and tyre manufactures, HE is helping family drivers, commuters and commercial drivers keep tyres in top condition. Some of these plans are already being delivered.

Indra has been awarded a contract from Highways England (HE) to install a Tunnel Management Control System (TMCS) for its tunnel estate as part of a project that foresees the option of implementing the solution in all 13 tunnels managed by HE for €10 million (£8,900,00).

Highways England has awarded a £115 million ($152 million) asset support contract extension of 17 months to Balfour Beatty and Mott MacDonald to continue its service delivery for Area 10; covering Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester. The contract will run from November 2017 to March 2019. The current asset support contract delivers a range of service delivery and maintenance activities such as 24/7 incident response, to ensuring the safe operation of the 570km of the road network.

The UK’s drivers need help to better understand Smart Motorways, Red X signs and breakdown procedures, according to research by Transport Focus, an independent transport user watchdog. Its research showed that safety is not at the forefront of drivers’ minds and few know what to do in the event of a breakdown.

Mobile Visual Information Systems (MVIS) has implemented its DATEX journey time solution (JTS) on Highway’s England’s US$1.9 billion (£1.5billion) A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon upgrade scheme, enabling an average of 85,000 drivers daily who use the 21 mile stretch of road to navigate the roadworks. The project incorporates 26 Bartco UK VMS-Cs variable message signs which display journey times from their locations to the end of the affected stretch of road

Two major new road schemes worth more than US$388 million (£300 million) are set to cut congestion and improve journey times for hundreds of thousands of drivers in Merseyside and Cheshire, UK. Highways England has set out its preferred options for upgrading the key route to the Port of Liverpool and creating a new junction on the M56 near Runcorn following public consultations earlier this year.