Steve Gooding, former Department for Transport director and director of the RAC Foundation, discusses Highways England’s current performance and future plans.
And so the deadline passes to submit comments on the Department for Transport’s (DfT) consultation on shaping the future of England’s strategic roads.
Or, more accurately, to pass judgement on Highways England’s own Initial Report – a dense 103-page read (or just under 43 miles of network per page for those fond of a handy statistic) – since that is what the DfT’s document effectively invites us to do.
The Highways England report sets out its stall on the story so far, just over halfway through RIS 1 and less than three years, we should remind ourselves, since Highways England emerged blinking into the light of day from the constraining chrysalis that was the Highways Agency.
The verdict? I’d say a solid grade B for progress to date (come on Jim, you weren’t expecting me to be straight in with an A just yet, were you?). It’s worth remembering that the feverish work that went into setting up the new arm’s length company – the performance framework, the financial settlement and a whole bunch of other legal, financial and managerial changes – compressed the toil of a full-on regulatory review and a major company restructuring into an eye-wateringly short window.
So well done to the team that put in the spadework, not least to Alan Cook, who first recommended the restructuring in a report he wrote as the Highways Agency’s first chairman.
The foundations are looking sound: high, stable and predictable funding; a clear statement – the first – of the Government’s expectations of the network and the company running it; clearer accountability for delivery; a fresh emphasis on customer service; and a recognition that few if any journeys begin and end on the Highways England network – hence better joining up with neighbouring highway authorities really matters.
If only chancellor Philip Hammond would reward this successful start with a commitment to put the planned National Roads Fund onto a firm statutory footing, rather than leaving us and a naturally cautious supply chain to trust to a politician’s promises. We’ll continue to argue that case.
The Initial Report also contains Highways England’s proposals and recommendations for the network for Road Period 2 (2020-2025). Again, plenty of good stuff here. The first really clear explanation of a new hierarchy of road design, including the ‘Expressway’ concept that until now has been somewhat shrouded in mystery.
Anything that simplifies and makes more comprehensible what we should expect to encounter as road users gets the thumbs up from the RAC Foundation. We know that too many motorists are sticking to lane 2 or 3 of an all lane running section of motorway because they don’t recognise the conversion of the hard shoulder to become lane 1.
There are ongoing concerns about the spacing and signing of refuges – despite Highways England taking remedial action to address both matters – and the meaning of the red X and other warnings. So, the more the nature of the road can be standardised into a limited number of familiar and reasonably intuitive categories, the better.
That said, the acid test of the proposal will be moving beyond the diagrams on pages 58 and 59 to a programme that can move at pace and not leave us mired in a lengthy and messy transition. It will be as important to strip away the outdated technology as it will be to install the new kit swiftly and ensure it links to a back-office system that generates clear and consistent messaging from one variable message sign to the next. At present alternating variable message signs can carry inconsistent messages, being sent through different systems.
Do we need a root and branch review of the performance metrics devised for RIS 1? It is understandable that Highways England would have us draw a distinction between the generality of data collected about issues such as traffic flow and asset condition; the metrics which, over time, tell us how the network is performing, and the specific performance targets on which the success of Highways England’s management team is judged. Easier said than done, though. Much should rest on the sensible interpretation of results where the achievement of a target might have been boosted or confounded by measures outside Highways England’s gift.
The strongest driver for some – we’d still say limited – change is whether the metrics identified as key performance indicators are both reflective of customers’ needs and create the right focus for managers’ attention.
We think more work is needed on network performance where we would like to see development of a three-part measure of ‘delay’, distinguishing between planned works (enhancement and maintenance), excess traffic demand over design capacity, and delay resulting from incidents ( for example crashes) above a threshold. We think this goes to the heart of the network reliability users patently crave and goes hand-in-hand with our call for improved accident and incident investigation.
‘The future is inherently uncertain’ says the Initial Report. Hard to argue with that. But among all the uncertainties borne of driverless technology, alternative fuels and our changing lifestyles, there’s another statement in Highways England’s report that stands out: ‘We connect the country’ – true, and that’s why it’s so important that Highways England, the DfT and the Treasury get it right.
