Effective road and traffic management

Supplementary written evidence from Intelligent Transport Systems UK (ITS ( UK ) ) (ETM 06a)

Executive Summary

- Congestion is going to get worse as the economy grows again – we have had a relatively "easy ride" recently. Most congestion is caused by too many people trying to use the same road space at once, not by roadworks or accidents;

- Government intervening and coordinating how traffic moves – but not interfering in all aspects – can reduce congestion, given how it forms when roads approach capacity,

- Many such interventions are met with initial stakeholder resistance – like the M42 Active Traffic Management scheme – but have then shown safety, emissions, and journey time benefits plus cost savings valued by all stakeholders. This was an innovative project where government took the risk of investing in a pilot that proved the viability before moving to wider implementation – government needs to underpin more experimentation like this;

- Almost all the tools required to reduce congestion from new technology and better operations are developed and available, allied with proven tools like SCOOT that link traffic signals – a tool so effective that it has been sold to cities around the world. But these tools desperately need to be joined up to work together and exploited across the UK – not just in a small proportion of local authorities with expertise and remaining budget. Central Government can educate and co-ordinate them to reduce costs to the public purse;

- The public and some parts of government – central and local – are unaware of what is available now. There are many myths about congestion and so this lack of awareness means the wheel is frequently reinvented and investment wasted;

- Drivers have already bought into reducing congestion themselves – there are about 4 million satellite navigation devices with existing traffic information and many more traffic apps. These same devices can also provide new coverage of data to detect and measure congestion, using technology paid for by drivers themselves, not by government;

- The key is making it all work together and encouraging wide-scale adoption, via 3 steps:

1. A central Government facilitated template for how to join up the various existing tools– often called an "architecture" but better seen simply as the picture on the box of a complex jigsaw illustrating how it all fits together

2. More awareness amongst local authorities of what tools are available, their benefits in clearly understandable terms for elected officials -not technologists - and how to procure them quickly and cheaply

3. Exploiting and extending the skills in local government in this area as resources are reduced through combining very local schemes into more regional approaches

- We cannot remove congestion, but we can intervene to reduce it, and allow the people of the UK and the goods they need to flow as the economy regains strength. We have the technology on both the road and in vehicles and some skilled people but central government needs to push this now as a mainstream – and cost effective - part of traffic management and smarter travel and not "tomorrow’s world" technology.

- Governance changes might be needed –Local and Central government combining resources & skills and regional, rather than local, operations and procurement to reduce costs.

How Traffic Management can help reduce congestion

Traffic congestion has one of 3 causes:

· Demand consistently exceeds supply (like tickets for major pop concerts, Wimbledon )

· Demand regularly exceeds supply at certain times (like a PO counter on pension days, or a supermarket at weekends)

· Something temporarily affects demand or supply: an accident , rain, drivers' behaviour, a special event etc

Data provided to ITS UK by Trafficlink – who collect traffic and congestion data across all the UK from their own sensors and traffic authorities – is attached. This shows that most congestion is caused by simply too much traffic. It also shows that congestion change has followed GDP change, but in an exaggerated way, and the UK is at a congestion "tipping point", where small changes in traffic demand can make congestion far worse. This is similar to driving at half term holidays, where just a small change in demand for traffic in peak hours has a marked impact on journey times.

Traffic management – such as through ATM or simply better information – can contribute to reducing congestion once it has started to build up or even prevent it; Intelligent Transport Systems can additionally contribute to preventing or delaying the onset of congestion by making these small changes in flow or capacity reap much bigger benefits in congestion. The Society’s first memorandum described how traffic speed varies with demand – shown as a picture at the end of this memorandum. The key objective of congestion management is to keep the road network as close as possible to maximum throughput. This is best achieved on a motorway by regulating all lanes in a carriageway to the same speed to deter "lane hopping". Three techniques are well established for this purpose:

· Variable Speed Limits (pioneered on M25 near Heathrow) to constrain all lanes to the same maximum speed

· Ramp Metering to smooth the flow of new traffic onto a motorway using traffic signals on the ‘on’ ramp

· Active Traffic Management , the sequential deployment of variable speed limits, then ramp metering then controlled use of the hard shoulder for a temporary capacity boost

Such interventions need only be used during the critical parts of the day when demand nears capacity – so they are not interfering with traffic at less busy times.

Use of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) to reduce congestion

ITS can go beyond traffic management by influencing demand for use of road space. Probably the most direct method for doing this is distance based Road User Charging – either all vehicles or trucks – but we recognise that the Committee does not intend to look into RUC in this study.

There are two well-established ITS techniques for reducing demand or for spreading demand across the day so that peaks are reduced:

· Using real-time traffic condition information and knowledge of historic patterns, so that travellers planning a journey can be nudged away from recognised peak periods, and travellers already on the network can be alerted by a variety of means ranging from traditional radio messages to being offered alternative routes via traffic equipped with satellite navigation devices. An example here is that so many people still choose to travel on Maundy Thursday "to beat the rush", yet it is the busiest day on the network. Freeing up more and more data to provide better information and access to services – and marketing of their existence to drivers – would have benefits simply through changing the times people make journeys;

· Using new sources of data such as GPS equipped vehicles and data from off call mobile phones, combined with modelling and pattern recognition techniques to monitor the flows on a network, so that the conditions likely to lead to congestion can be identified at the earliest possible stage and mitigating techniques can be deployed before the worst situations develop

Deployment of traffic management and ITS by Local Authorities

The extent to which LAs use these methods is very uneven and reflects familiarity with the techniques and resource and skills shortages. Very roughly, there are 15 or so authorities who are adequately resourced, familiar with the state-of-the-art, capable of innovation and mostly self-sufficient. There is a group of 30 or so who are aware of current thinking, enthusiastic about the possibilities for improving conditions, fairly capable but need more help and guidance. That leaves over 100 authorities who are not well aware, are missing the benefits and potentially need a lot of help to get started. In the view of ITS (UK), this is unlikely to change as:

· There is no central Government coordination in this area and a DfT project for documenting and publishing benefits has been stopped ("ITS Toolkit")

· In many LAs the size and number of potholes dominates transport thinking. The need to manage traffic actively, and to understand the economic and social consequences of a congested network, seem only rarely to be recognised

· Funds are ring fenced too severely

· Schemes to improve knowledge transfer and understanding and address skills shortages have been cut

· Procurement of systems is far too complicated and is not helped by the absence of a National System Architecture to simplify both the purchase of products and their integration – it also favours large systems houses rather than innovative SMEs

· LAs seem reluctant to combine into larger consortia to share resources and knowledge

The following comments made by the Chairman of the Audit Commission Michael O'Higgins in announcing the publication of the ‘Going the Distance’ – Achieving better value for money in road maintenance’ Report - May 2011 will be of interest to the Transport Committee members . His statements offer an independent assessment of traffic management by local authorities. He said, "Prevention is better than cure, but councils have to consider the safety and insurance risks of damaged surfaces" adding that "roads costs are rising while councils' belts are tightening." However he said that councils could be more effective at using the resources they did have, stating "Sadly we found collaboration between councils to be rare, with too few councils procuring in cost-saving partnerships."

 

Deployment of traffic management and ITS by Central Government

In general central government, as represented by the Highways Agency, has an excellent record of implementing advanced traffic management and ITS schemes – the success of the M42 ATM Hard Shoulder Running concept is internationally recognised – but this leadership is likely to be lost because:

· Central Government seems not to be thinking sufficiently strategically with virtually no long term view of where the transport technology, automotive and telecoms sectors are going. Electric vehicles seem to be the only focus, yet here too the link to congestion is missing.

· Despite the considerable public spending on transport technology there is no central centre of excellence able to advise on technically proven, cost-effective solutions in an analogous way to the NICE’s advice to hospitals and GPs on medical treatments. Such a centre should be an essential complement to the Localism policy.

· There seems to be a reluctance to try new ideas – the fear of an unsatisfactory result in 3 cases in 1000 appears to dominate the chances of success in 997 cases. New problems need new approaches and a state of mind that does not try to stop an experiment with the argument that it has not been done before.

· The Government‘s wish to ‘stop the war on the motorist’ is recognised and understood but there appears to be an inability to differentiate between intervening and regulating in a sector on the one hand, and coordinating or supporting it by supporting best practice for local decision on adoption.

· The Government procurement process is sluggish and does not encourage innovative solutions nor participation by SMEs.

· There is a need to join up the thinking and actions of different Departments. For example, DCMS and BIS have proposed changing the allocation of radio spectrum, and stopping deployment of FM radio in favour of DAB. But there is no evidence of referral to transport policy regarding the widespread impact on 4 million satellite navigation devices that use RDS-TMC for live traffic updates – or the considerable cost implications for many millions of motorists forced to purchase new car radios.

Quantifying anti-congestion actions

There are recognised measures of success or performance indicators for most of the techniques described in this memorandum. The key requirement is to set a policy objective against which costs and benefits can be assessed and for ITS schemes generally this could be improved journey time reliability, increased network capacity, reduction in vehicle emissions, improving the average traffic speed for a specified time period, cutting average times for specified end-to-end journeys etc.

The FREEFLOW demonstration project, part funded by DfT and the Technology Strategy Board, is showing how largely the same technology can be used in London to help smooth traffic, in York to improve bus compliance with timetables, and in Kent to manage impacts from motorway closures by joining together existing tools.

The question should always be what objective does the local policy require – not what technology. For example TfL have recently shown that by plugging together a number of disparate systems they can obtain a far more intelligent picture of congestion, and so intervene to reduce it. The Architecture they have produced for doing this would form a foundation for all local authorities – appropriately scaled down – with different local policies. The benefits of deploying such a common architecture across the UK would be:

- More management of congestion from existing systems and evidence of the benefits gained to encourage local policy makers to continue investment

- The ability for the same resources to support more operational interventions against congestion, or the interventions to be undertaken with reduced investment; and

- The exchange of data between authorities and its delivery to other road users by a variety of means taking on board new technologies and supporting traditional channels like radio traffic news.

Why Government intervention is essential

The current approach to national traffic management has a strong reliance on each driver behaving in a socially aware and flexible way in full compliance with the spirit of the Highway Code. Such a philosophy has clearly been acceptable and successful in the past but it is not well suited to 21st century road conditions. Getting the maximum output from infrastructure investment requires managing more than a single length of road. A collection of linked roads has to be taken together as a network and the UK has pioneered this approach with initially SCOOT for small area traffic signals management and then UTMC (Urban Traffic Management and Control) for linked groups of networks. The benefits of SCOOT have been included in TRL’s evidence [ ETM 07 ] but in summary over 200 cities worldwide use it, saving 19% of delays in London when measured in 1985. Much of the quantified evidence for its use is old, but a recent study showed reduction of active delays with SCOOT were worth around £100K per junction per year to road users, as well as substantial carbon savings.

The responsibility for optimal network management has to be transferred from individual drivers’ habits and preferences to an area-wide approach. Sustaining the maximum throughput, and avoiding congestion, on a complex network of roads including multi-lane roads such as motorways, requires active intervention on a wide scale. At a minimum, it requires the delivery of advice to drivers regarding prevailing conditions and expected trends. As traffic flows grow steadily, it increasingly involves regulatory intervention by means of control of maximum permitted speed or access to the network or both.

No single organisation or group of local bodies can deliver this result; the policies and practices have to be set by central Government.

Removing barriers to progress – some ‘Quick Wins’ to improve traffic management and reduce congestion

Nearly all the ITS technologies are now well established and there is considerable knowledge regarding their usage either in the UK or easily accessible from research projects or deployments overseas. So the barriers to their widespread use within the UK are not technical but administrative and financial. While careful use of ITS products can generate real cash savings, rolling out Hard Shoulder Running or Traffic Management schemes requires ‘real’ money but the return is ‘social’ in the form of reduced emissions, better journey time reliability etc. Individual travellers or hauliers will then realise monetary savings from reduced fuel consumption or better returns from assets.

To address administrative barriers, ITS (UK) recommends Central Government should:

1. Maximise the productivity of the physical assets we have by:

· Getting the private and public sectors working more closely together by avoiding the procurement ‘Red Tape’ and actively encouraging partnership solutions.

· Reduce red tape also on Network managers so that they can focus on minimising congestion rather than minimising possible consequences of actions.

· Making more use of Hard Shoulder Running and Variable Speed Limits.

· Intervening when traffic is such that congestion might occur, but not interfering when it will not, for example:

o Improving journey times by using variable speed limits in road works when traffic is very light or the workforce is absent, or between, say, 02:00 and 06:00 – to permit 10mph more than the "at work time", and

o Managing mixed traffic separately (as is done with rail networks) by restricting PSVs or HGVs to lanes 1 & 2 only on 3+ lane carriageways and targeted controls at other times.

· Reducing the numbers of trucks running empty by creating opportunities and incentivising cooperation and sharing.

· Relaxing delivery restrictions so that more are made outside normal business hours with consequent benefit to networks at peak times and using technology to manage new ways of parking enforcement.

· Introducing more goods consolidation sites to minimise the numbers of deliveries and thus the impacts on traffic flow.

2. Be more experimental: try new or experimental techniques on a small scale; monitor and assess their benefits and costs; then accept or reject them as part of the standard ‘tool kit’ and notify all highway authorities. M42 ATM is a perfect example of this.

3. Revise the HA's procurement approach to one based on buying the outcomes of technology, so that it doesn't focus on the process and technology itself but seeks to maximise the business objectives.

4. Make more use of data available from in-vehicle fleet management and other systems, especially smartphone applications and other devices that road users pay for themselves that can reduce the cost to the public purse of measuring congestion. A large proportion of HGVs is equipped with fleet management systems already, and soon all trucks entering the UK from France will be equipped with GPS tracking as part of the Ecotaxe project there.

5. The opportunity to 'piggy back' on existing investment (cf the Ecotaxe note above) for distance related truck charging in the UK that could impact on congestion has not been taken up with the proposed time only vignette.

6. Adopt weather-related traffic management policies that intervene when required:

· Reduce accident and incident risks by 'wet' speed limits on motorways and high quality ‘A’ roads eg 80mph if it is dry 60mph if it is raining as used in France

· When trunk roads are seriously snowbound, empower network managers to clear just one lane thoroughly for priority commercial traffic

7. Encourage consolidation and sharing between Local Authorities

· Many LAs manage very small areas with sub-optimal resources. There would be service benefits and cash savings if groups of LAs were to combine the investment needed in services that are flexible and scalable – many UTMC authorities have started to use "cloud computing" but there is a resistance in some authorities and the Highways Agency to not having " an asset to own ourselves in case things go wrong"

· Promote more joining up of the HA and LAs to improve traveller services (eg County Council controlled variable message signs should provide information on congestion on nearby Motorways, rather than blank messages as now . This will need to ensure adequate revenue funding streams, to ensure that systems are updated and maintained at a frequency appropriate to developments in traffic and IT.

Above all, provide a central government led template for how existing road assets and technology, new and old, can support interventions to reduce congestion and carbon impacts. Some of the "medicines" – like SCOOT – have long proven their effectiveness, but local traffic managers need to know which new ones to prescribe alongside them and how to make them work locally. So we need the equivalent of NICE [1] for congestion that also spreads knowledge and skills to new people entering the profession.

May 2011

Annex 1: The causes of, and trends in, congestion across the UK – quarter on quarter 2007-2011

Q1s 2007-2011 reportable UK congestion incidents by type

Q1s 2007-2011 reportable UK congestion incidents by road type

Q1s 2007-2011 Annual growth in reportable UK congestion incidents vs GDP growth

Data supplied by Trafficlink for all UK roads for individual numbers of validated reports of congestion – ie traffic jams impacting the public