TRL to seek ways to reduce delays caused by roadworks
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A joint £1m fund to research and develop new technology to reduce the disruption caused by roadworks was announced today by UK transport secretary Philip Hammond and mayor of London Boris Johnson.
The money will fund an 18-month project by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) to examine engineering techniques that could see utilities use temporary road-surfacing methods and fast-setting replacement road surfaces.
This would allow utility companies to carry out more work at quieter times and to re-open roads during peak traffic periods to reduce delays and disruption.
Funding will be provided equally by the Department for Transport (DfT) and Transport for London (TfL).
Readers' comments (5)
Brian Pollard | 11 May 2011 1:39 pm
I can't wait. In 40 years of driving, there has always been a road works every 50 miles.
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Anonymous | 11 May 2011 4:05 pm
How often have we seen roadworks barriers and traffic lights in place causing long holdups but no one actually working on the job!
Ofter due to very bad planning by the companies and lax monitoring by the authorities.
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John Douglas | 11 May 2011 6:20 pm
They don't need to research the business of quick recovery surfaces, they just need to ask the Royal Engineers. The RE has methods for repairing runways to fast jet standards in a very few hours.
What is needed though is commercial research to find out what will persuade the responsible party to come back and do final reinstatement at the appropriate juncture. Until they do, sales of off-road vehicles will continue to facilitate the use of highways in Buckinghamshire, amongst other guilty counties, as well as the pavement outside Harvey-Nicks.
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S. Martin | 12 May 2011 2:02 am
Most roadworks are for utilities repairing or updating existing delapidated services, so how about a radical rethink.
If services were not run under roads, there would be no need to continually dig them up for burst mains, blown cables, or leaking gas mains.
If concrete modular sections were laid under the pavements to house these services we could avoid significant roadworks. These need to be tall enough to allow a man to walk upright in them and could house all the services. It would cost more to install, but the savings could be significant with the transport delays to the countries economy.
Such a system could also be safer, if electronic monitoring is installed it could detect leaking gas or water, blown electric cables, and allow companies to act quickly.
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Robert Taylor | 12 May 2011 3:48 pm
It would help if utility companies could liase occasionally. When a small group of houses was built on the other side of the road from my last house, water, gas and electricity supplies had to go under the road from my side. Each utility came along, a week or so apart, and dug their own trench in the road to lay their pipes / conduits!
All this after the road had just been resurfaced as well!
The last time I drove across Germany all roadworks I encountered were being worked on by people moving with some alacrity (at night as well). My commute to work involves using the M4 from Newport and the M49; up until recently whole lanes of these routes were coned off for months on end with no activity apparent during my journey times.
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