All motorway maintenance work is delivered using traffic management and road closures. Motorway closures rely on traffic levels dropping below a set level. This uncertainty about when the motorway will close impacts efficiency and is a safety risk.
The problem
As National Highways' data science partner, Amey Consulting learned that different approaches were used in each region. The data being used to plan closures was 7 years out of date - traffic flow data was not accurate. We found that works gangs and plant could be sitting on the side of the motorway for up to an hour waiting for traffic flows to drop. Amey Consulting understood from Amey’s Transport Infrastructure business how they could plan works better and reduce costs if better information was available
The solution
We collected all the ways that National Highways currently used to plan closures. We then collected up to date traffic flow information and spoke to key stakeholders. We consolidated all the information and built a new, consistent planning tool. We designed a predictive model to improve future planning. This potentially reduces the overall number or road closures needed. The planning tool also has built in updates to ensure the base data is up to date
Benefits
- Considerable savings - maintenance productivity benefits of £68m enabled in RIS2
- Safety has been improved because people and plant are only on the network during the closures. There is no waiting on hard shoulders.