The Department for Transport (DfT) is to allow local highway authorities to choose their own surveying technology for road condition monitoring and will introduce a new data standard.
Following a review of road condition data and technology by the department, authorities will be able to choose ‘whichever surveying technology best supports their asset management strategy, providing the technology aligns to this new data standard’.
Officials said this will ‘open the market, driving choice and technological innovation while still ensuring that data will be sufficiently comparable for us to maintain a national view of the condition of the highways network’.
Local highway authorities are required to submit road condition data to the us annually as part of the single data list. At present, the DfT prescribes that this data must be collected using Surface Condition Assessment for the National Network of Roads (SCANNER) survey vehicles.
Officials said that while SCANNER technology continues to be robust and valued by many local authorities, an increasing number of competing technologies now offer alternative choices to local authorities.
‘These emerging suppliers are already establishing a growing presence in the sector, but the current prescriptive requirements create a barrier to entering the market which discourages innovation.’
In collaboration with an external standards agency, the DfT will form a steering group of representatives from local highway authorities, potential suppliers and ‘relevant sector bodies’, as well as consulting with devolved administrations.
The steering group will agree the principles and requirements for the standard and oversee its implementation.
The DfT also re-announced £15m for English councils to improve their traffic light systems, under what it called a ‘multimillion-pound initiative to improve local roads’.
Officials said councils ‘will be expected to not only use the extra funding to repair and improve existing traffic signals but also consider how to future-proof their local road networks and prepare for technological innovations’.
The RAC’s head of roads policy, Nicholas Lyes, said: ‘Additional investment to cut congestion and make pothole repairs better for the future is very welcome. Improving traffic lights can make a significant difference to local roads by efficiently maximising the number of vehicles that can safely pass through junctions while hitting a pothole can be an expensive and even a dangerous experience.
‘We look forward to seeing how drivers and road users more widely can benefit from the use of 21st-century technology to repair their local roads more quickly.’
