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Warning: roadworks hell ahead



A new report from software company Causeway and the National Traffic managers Forum of ADEPT – the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy and Transport – warns that councils are facing a significant increase in the number of works taking place on local roads.


In addition to the headaches of road maintenance and pothole repair, local authorities face the challenges of fibre rollouts, water infrastructure repairs and improvements and the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. All set against a forecasted increase in traffic of 54% by 2060, according to the Department for Transport, the report paints a picture of congestion, disruption and frustration for road users, businesses and communities.


Without change, says the report The Road Ahead, we are facing “a road and streetworks emergency by 2030”. Causeway and ADEPT base this statement on a survey of 284 respondents from local highway authorities and 135 from utility companies and on data from one.network, a digital road management platform that Causeway acquired in July 2023.


According to one.network data, road and street works have risen by 41.5% between 2018 and 2023. There has been an 18% increase in low impact roadworks over the same period.


Project Gigabit, the Government programme to provide faster broadband to more communities is a big source of pressure. Telecommunication street works have risen in volume by 126% since 2018, says the report, with their duration increasing by 92%. Some 42% of local authority respondents thought that fibre services or works present the greatest challenge to managing road networks.


As well as the increasing volumes of works on our roads, councils and utility companies are battling against processes and systems that make coordination of permits, approvals and closures complex and time consuming, says the reports. The survey revealed that 81% of local authority respondents thought that management and communications in roadworks could be improved. And 71% of utility company respondents said that road works and street works are planned in a disjointed way.


The answer to these mounting challenges, says the report, is better information and collaboration. Not surprisingly from a report co-authored by Causeway, digital collaboration tools – perhaps like one.network – are the way ahead, it suggests.

Although not covered in the report, increasing volumes of utilities works often mean increasing road repair bills for local authorities. Poor quality reinstatements can lead to uneven roads, cracks and eventually potholes. Utility companies are only responsible for any defects that arise up to two years after the works were done. After that, the buck passes to the highways authority.


Thermal Road Repairs’ technology has long been deployed to remedy problems of uneven road surfaces or to remove cracks that have formed at the joint between the existing road surface and reinstated trench. More recently, we developed a slim version of our patented heaters to sit over trenches to create a ‘right-first-time’ reinstatement. Because the existing asphalt at the edges of the trench are heated up, old and new material are mixed and bonded together before the repair is compacted.

 

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