Highways sets out some of the many highlights of Traffex, the UK’s leading road and highways tradeshow, which takes place at the CBS Arena on 22-23 May with two days of inspirational content, networking and product discovery.
This year at Traffex, two new theatres are providing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) accredited content across a series of keynote presentations, panel discussions and interactive workshops on the hot topics of the day and the technology aiming to address them.
Topping the bill
The Management and Mobility Theatre will tackle the headline strategic issues around how our networks are run. Topping the bill will be National Highways’ chief customer and strategy officer, Elliot Shaw.
Mr Shaw (pictured), who joined the government-owned company in 2016 and was appointed to its board in January 2024, is responsible for the strategic development of the National Highways network. He will give the opening address at 10am on Wednesday 22 May.
His keynote – Strategic Roads, RIS 2 and Beyond – will focus on priorities for the road network, including the pivotal conclusion of the Road Investment Strategy 2 (RIS 2), which runs until March next year.
Bill Esterson, Labour’s shadow minister for roads, will then give the second keynote speech.
If opinion polls are anything like accurate, Mr Esterson, who is MP for Sefton Central, could be in government next year.
As part of an opening day where the Management and Mobility Theatre will foreground Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and what new technology can do for the road network, Darren Capes, ITS policy lead at the Department for Transport (DfT), will give delegates the latest on the Government’s £70m for traffic signals.
With the first two rounds of funding underway, Mr Capes will lead a panel discussion, talking to two of the successful authorities about their experience and spending plans.
Future roads
Other presentations on the first day will cover vision-based traffic signal controls; futureproofing transport infrastructure; using AI to proactively anticipate and manage traffic across the network; connected vehicle data; and embracing the connected future.
Taking a brief break from the rise of the robots, an expert panel, including Simon Morgan of Buchanan Computing, will look at civil moving traffic enforcement (MTE). As Highways has reported, the DfT recently stalled the roll-out of MTE to local authorities, but there remain more than 50 highway authorities outside London with these powers.
Mr Morgan is chair of the Traffic Signs Panel at the Institute of Highway Engineers (IHE) while Mr Capes is the institute’s senior vice president.
Another IHE luminary, council member Sean Rooney, will lead a panel on supporting existing and emerging methods and materials in highways maintenance, which also features Matthew Eglinton (pictured below), head of local highways policy at the DfT.
Mr Rooney is head of service for highway maintenance at Oxfordshire County Council and is due to assume the role of president of the Local Government Technical Advisers Group (LGTAG) next month.
Roads reform
Day two in the Management and Mobility Theatre kicks off at 10am with Rachel Gittens, deputy director for the strategic road network at the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), discussing the ORR’s role in delivering roads reform for users and the wider public.
Among other topics, she will set out the ORR’s role in setting the next RIS, with a focus on its efficiency review. With money likely to be tight over the next five years, making sure National Highways makes the most of every pound of taxpayers’ cash will be a key issue.
On a similar theme, Emma Ward, director general, roads, devolution and motoring at the DfT, will give the morning’s second keynote on the Government’s plans for roads investment, specifically what the Network North plan for redirected HS2 cash means for investment in local road infrastructure.
The day will see five panel sessions discussing some of the key issues in the sector, expertly moderated by two major figures in the ITS world – Max Sugarman, chief executive of ITS UK, and industry stalwart and the founder of ITS Now, Alistair Gollop.
With the issue of a diminishing and ageing workforce a constant problem in the industry, the first of these sessions will ask: how can we attract young professionals to the industry and support them?
Big names on this panel include IHE chief executive Steve Spender and Ann Carruthers, director of environment at Leicestershire County Council, who is also first vice president at ADEPT and chair of its Transport and Connectivity Board.
The day also features not one but two workshops on the highly topical issue of how local authorities can unlock the full potential of traffic regulation order digitisation, while a fourth panel will examine whether mobility pricing is the answer to the thorny question of how we pay for our roads in future. While it is the solution that dare not speak its name, there is an emerging belief that mobility pricing will be implemented, eventually.
Addressing another bone of contention in traffic management, a panel on active travel and the perceived hierarchy of road users will ask the key question: How do we balance restraining ‘anti-driver traffic management measures’ as per the DfT’s Plan for Drivers with Active Travel England’s objective for 50% of trips in England’s towns and cities to be walked, wheeled or cycled by 2030?
Safety and sustainability
The Traffex Safety and Sustainability Theatre will mainly look at the technical details behind these eponymous issues. It kicks off with a panel discussion of a topic that is by no means short of controversy: data and insights from the roll-out of 20mph speed limits in residential Wales.
Further panels on the safety theme will look at the relationship between road deaths and larger vehicles and designing and maintaining roads to make them safer.
Following Highways’ recent investigation into the impact of National Highways’ huge M25 Junction 10 scheme, Iain McDonald of SRL Traffic Systems will look at the congestion, safety, and sustainability issues around roadworks, asking at which point of a project you consider the impact of congestion on road users.
Panels and presentations in the afternoon will focus on the sustainability side of things, including biodiversity and measuring decarbonisation.
Highlights of the second day in the Safety and Sustainability Theatre include a look at the human side of things, including the 10 million people who experience social exclusion from the transport system.
A bonus Traffex session on the first day will see Michael Dnes, head of future road technology at the DfT, lead a workshop on the challenges of bringing technology to the road network in the Vodafone Lounge.
Traffex takes place alongside Parkex, Cold Comfort and a brand new event, Evex, which will examine challenges for councils and the private sector in delivering the Government’s vision to bring convenient, affordable and reliable electric vehicle charging across the UK.
Cold Comfort is the UK’s leading roads and extreme weather conference - and you can find out more in our show guide.
As the name suggests, Traffex is also an exhibition – and the trading floor of transport – where you can meet experts in traffic management, road maintenance, electrification, safety, extreme weather management, highways and transport.
Visit www.traffex.com for more information and to register.
