Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
MR ARCHIE
ROBERTSON OBE, HIGHWAYS
AGENCY
8 DECEMBER 2004
Q100 Mr Bacon: Is it possible that you
could give us a note with some more detail on this, and also a
detailed breakdown of the £14 million?
Mr Robertson: The £14 million
is not committed. What is committed is £11.2 million, but
I am happy to tell you what that has been spent on.[5]
Q101 Mr Bacon: But you are expecting
to spend £14million, if you can, on this project. Is that
right?
Mr Robertson: We are expecting
to get the very best out of it for the very minimum that we can
but we know we are still going to have some expense to recommisson
after the road works.
Q102 Mr Bacon: I am just trying to be
clear about the total numbers, because my brief says £14
million. In answer to an earlier question you said £14 million
was where you expected to be at the end.
Mr Robertson: That is the budget
within which we will do this.
Mr Bacon: If you could send us a note
on that project and on the breakdown of this budget, and assume
it is £14 million, that would be very helpful.
Q103 Mr Williams: I know you have only
been there a year, and it is probably unfair, but what I feel
is that you lack any sense of urgency. This is what comes over.
It may be doing you a great injustice. It is your first time here,
so I am not trying to be unkind, but one does get the feeling
that you are saying, "We have got to try this, we have got
to try that." Let us get on with it. We get the feeling of
reluctance in addressing the possibility of experimentation. Are
we doing you an injustice?
Mr Robertson: Yes, I think you
are, and it would be true to say that we have concentrated our
management efforts very much on launching this new traffic officer
service, which never even existed before. It got off the ground
in June 2003 and people have been out providing the service in
the Midlands since April and have their powers this month to start
operating on the highway, so we are actually very pleased at the
way in which we have been able to grab that and get on with it.
We need to harness the energy that has gone into that and drive
the organisation forward. As I have explained, I think, my aim
is to get everybody with a stake in the outcomes that I want the
Highways Agency to achieve, which is targeting congestion and
improving safety, and by having a personal stake in it in terms
of having objectives upon which they want to improve. As an organisation,
we are not bad at identifying good things that we want to do.
Where we need more help, where we need to help ourselves more,
is to pull it through. We need somebody who is responsible for
the M11 or some stretch of road, to say "I need some kit
to help me get my customers through here better in future."
Q104 Mr Williams: Who would be the people
who could do that, and what approach have you made to them, saying
"We desperately need this advice from you"?
Mr Robertson: These people are
being organised to do that now, and given new roles as part of
that organisation, given new structures, new support from managers,
and the people who are good scientists who can borrow those ideas
from others, who can evaluate them, are already there. They just
need more encouragement from the end users.
Q105 Mr Williams: Can I again have a
personal indulgence, as some of my colleagues have, over various
irritants? I drive up and down the M4, which compared with my
colleagues is a delight compared to travelling on the M1 and the
M6. I am lucky, but going up and down at the weekend, what is
the status when you come to these long stretches of 50 mile an
hour road with the bollards all along the side of the road, no
work going on, but "50" signs are still there and the
warnings about cameras are still there? You get one lane of traffic
going through at about 85 miles an hour down the outside, taking
no notice, and the rest all crawling along at just over 50 miles
an hour. Cannot something be done to clarify the position?
Mr Robertson: It is a good question.
There might be a couple of reasons for that, but we do not actually
provide either reason in our signage at road works as to whether
it is a temporary problem, where the equipment is there to prevent
you going above the speed limit to prevent you getting hurt, or
whether it is road works that we are doing overnight and from
which we do not withdraw all the signs.
Q106 Mr Williams: But these are long-term
stretches down the Swindon end. During the middle of the week
it is clear what is happening because there is work going on.
On Saturdays and Sundays there may be nothing going on, but there
is nothing to tell you that you no longer need to observe the
50 mile an hour limit, and there are still the warnings about
the cameras.
Mr Robertson: That is actually
there for your safety, because the integrity of the carriageway
is not assured, because they are doing some maintenance on perhaps
the drains.
Q107 Mr Williams: I do not see any safety
benefit to me in that if there is no work going on. The work is
going on off the motorway actually. It is at the end of the motorway.
I can understand when there are people working there that we owe
them a duty of safety, but when there is nothing going on, why
do the motorists have to put up with the irritation of thinking
"Dare we or daren't we?" and crossing their fingers
if they are in a hurry? Why can you not do something to indicate
to motorists what is going on in those stretches?
Mr Robertson: We should. My next
move on that is that we are doing our very best to get all traffic
management associated with road works off over Christmas and the
holiday period. We will not be able to get it all off because
there are some bits of work that are so complicated and that will
need to be finished to get good value for money that they will
be there, but we will be explaining in signs for the first time
that we have left that material there for people's safety. At
the moment I know we say nothing about it.
Q108 Mr Williams: But is the speed limit
still in effect or is it not still in effect? Motorists are clearly
confused from the way they drive.
Mr Robertson: The speed limit
will be in effect if there are signs with a speed limit. If the
signs are there, the speed limit is in effect.
Q109 Mr Williams: Even if there is absolutely
no work on the motorway at all?
Mr Robertson: That is correct,
because it is not related to the work; it is related to the hazard
that may reside on the highway.
Q110 Mr Williams: What hazard can there
be when the highway is clear, when the hard shoulder is clear,
and when you can see quite clearly what is along the side of the
road? It is not that at all, is it? It is just that you cannot
be bothered to get out and mask the signs.
Mr Robertson: I do not believe
that that is the case, but I would like to look into your particular
circumstances.[6]
Q111 Mr Williams: I wish you would, because
frankly, I do not think your explanation stands up for 50 seconds.
Switching to your new traffic officers, I can understand the logic
of trying to take some of this load off the police. One understands
that, but are we in the process of seeing the evolution of a new
type of road police? Is it envisaged that your traffic officers
will be allowed to carry cameras, to speed-check? Will that be
part of their role?
Mr Robertson: I am determined
that it should not be. This is a new service. It is a service
for customers, perhaps not so much for the one stuck in the accident
as for the thousands who may be stuck behind. We do not want to
have an enforcement role. There are others who can deal with that.
We believe we can provide a good service. Where similar sorts
of things have been done overseas, that appears to have worked
very well. I know there are going to be opportunities to develop
the service in the sense of being more efficient and effective
and perhaps helping customers more, but I have no vision that
encompasses enforcement duties for highways traffic.
Q112 Mr Williams: What of the enemy in
the corner over there? You want more money for this service. If
you agree to operate a camera system you could become self-financing.
Can I take it you would resists such pressure from our friends
at the Treasury?
Mr Robertson: I have not heard
the prospect, and certainly in terms of the challenge that I see
in front of us in the next few years, I do not think that would
be at all helpful.
Q113 Mr Williams: I suspect I have blundered
in raising the possibility in front of someone from the Treasury.
Mr Robertson: But you have not
changed my mind.
Q114 Mr Williams: What will your role
be in relation to the declaration of black spots? You are highways
management, and most motorists have a high suspicion of where
they put the cameras, because many go past these spots and never
remember ever seeing an accident there. It is very hard to get
statistics. The Home Office says it is up to the local police
force and so on. Do you have central road accident statistics
by site? Are you involved in the definition of accident black
spots, and if not, why not?
Mr Robertson: Yes, we do it for
the highways and trunk road network that we are responsible for.
It is actually compiled from police reports.
Q115 Mr Williams: So this information
is available centrally with you?
Mr Robertson: No, it is collected
by the police at the moment but we do have access to it on a specific
basis, because the decision-making we do, of course, is based
on an individual road, so where there are road safety concerns
on the basis of police reports, we will sit down with the police
and decide whether there is a black spot in a particular part
of the network. There are of course very few of those on the motorways,
for the simple reason that they are motorways.
Q116 Mr Williams: But in so far as they
are, you have that information centrally, therefore it is open
to us to table questions to a Minister—you are answerable
to the Minister for Transport—and we would be able to get
information relating to the relevance of cameras in alleged black
spots along the motorways?
Mr Robertson: Yes. I am not sure
that we keep it, but we could get it from the individual camera
partnerships, because for our network there are actually very
few cameras. There are cameras for enforcement of the variable
speed limits, and there are some cameras on black spots, as you
call them, perhaps on junction exits, but we have very few cameras
that are operated by the camera partnerships for the purposes
of black spot safety.
Q117 Mr Williams: Following on Angela's
point about information being available, something that surprises
me is how little use is made of the service stations themselves
for promulgation of information. It should be relatively easy,
because there is a limited number of them, to have both-way direction
information on traffic flows and hold-ups and so on, yet occasionally
you come across a flat screen with that sort of information. You
get one as you go into Magor services going down into Wales. I
can see what is ahead of me on the motorway as I am going through
Wales but why can you not do this more generally? That should
be fairly easy to do, should it not?
Mr Robertson: Yes, it is just
a question of putting the systems into the various places. We
are not quite at the stage yet where we are launching the reliable
information that would help for that. That is the role of the
National Traffic Control Centre, but it is the sort of thing that
I would expect them to do as part of their contract with us.
Q118 Mr Williams: You would expect them
in future or expect them to be doing already?
Mr Robertson: I expect them in
the future. They are not able to do it yet. They have to get their
information in a form that is worth looking at first. I expect
them to contribute to better information on the variable message
signs, including delays; I expect them to contribute information
to radio and TV stations; I expect them to promote the website;
and I expect them to promote information in a number of ways.
Q119 Mr Williams: Will you let us have
a note indicating what you envisage making of the service stations
in this respect and the timescale in which you see things developing,
if that is possible
Mr Robertson: We will do our best,
yes.[7]
Mr Williams: That is all you can do.
Thank you very much.
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