Call to restrict scope of permits

21 March 2007

Utilities are urging local highway authorities proposing permit schemes and ministers approving them to restrict their scope to the busiest roads, to ‘reduce costs and maximise the benefits’.
Dave Turnbull, operations director of the National Joint Utilities Group, alerted traffic managers last week to the fact that 83% of the cost of running a permit scheme would be down to utility works in ‘non-traffic sensitive’ type three and four roads.
He told a conference on the Traffic Management Act: ‘It will be possible and, I would argue, desirable, to only have permits on category one and two streets. ‘The Department for Transport will want to see a strong, cost-benefit analysis when scrutinising schemes. We can speculate on the possible congestion-reduction benefits of applying permits to category three and four roads.’
This would reduce costs for highways authorities, as well as utilities, Turnbull stressed. Living Streets fears, however, that utilities would give less attention to work on more lightly-trafficked streets where most short walking trips take place. Chief executive Tom Franklin said: ‘We fear pedestrians will continue to suffer from blocked footways.’
The DfT is considering barring highway authorities from applying charges for overrunning works to category three and four roads (Surveyor, 19 October 2006). A senior highway engineer speaking to Surveyor after the conference claimed the extra cost of applying permits to all roads was likely to be minimal. Works on roads where permits did not apply would, in any event, require notices.
The additional cost for utilities would be viewed as an unavoidable cost by regulators and passed on to consumers, he said. But Dave Pownall, Durham’s network manager, said what Turnbull was saying ‘makes a lot of sense’. The regulations meant that councils were likely to lose money running permit schemes, so ‘they’ll need to be targeted to the more strategic roads’.

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