Councils praised for keeping traffic moving

15 October 2007

Seventy per cent of local traffic authorities have ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ plans for meeting their duty to keep traffic moving, according to an assessment for the Department for Transport.

But while the results overall were pleasing to ministers, the appraisal of local transport plans by consultant Halcrow highlighted significant regional disparities in performance, and revealed a generally-lacklustre response to unplanned incidents.

Councils in Northeast England received only a ‘fair’ score of 50% on average, while those in the East Midlands gained an excellent mark of more than 80%. And while most LTPs demonstrated a good or excellent understanding of the duty’s requirements, and set out actions to tackle rising traffic, most had only fair proposals for managing road incidents – as reported by Surveyor in spring (15 March).

Three cities and conurbations and two counties were awarded 90% or more for covering all aspects of the network management duty guidance. Nottingham came out top, praised for its detailed plans for tackling traffic congestion and for its emergency plans, which included, unusually, establishing diversion routes in the event of unforeseen events affecting traffic on its network.

Leicester and Leicestershire had ‘very detailed works co-ordination’ – carrying out work on each other’s behalf, where possible – and providing ‘up-to-the-minute’ travel news. The Greater Manchester authorities demonstrated ‘very good’ day-to-day running of their networks, including, crucially, co-ordination with roads outside their areas; Bedfordshire, the final 90%-plus authority, had ‘exceptional’ plans for combating congestion. The only authorities rated as ‘weak’ were Northumberland, which had ‘little information’ on its response to the new duty, and Stockton-on-Tees, which failed to adequately set out what its traffic manager was doing.

Tyne & Wear was the only conurbation not to achieve a good or better, providing ‘minimal’ detail on congestion-monitoring, and having ‘non-existent’ incident-management plans. But ministers did not raise the prospect of intervention by the Government, as the Traffic Management Act allows, but instead struck a conciliatory tone. Transport minister, Rosie Winterton, speaking at a Local Government Association conference this week, praised ‘all those authorities which had done well’. The poor-scoring authorities, however, claimed improvements had already been made since the plans were written, up to two years ago.

Northumberland County Council vowed to ask for a review of the assessment, stressing that the authority ‘deals effectively with our small pockets of congestion’. Stockton-on-Tees said it was ‘doing everything within our power to fulfil our duty,’ including restricting the rate of traffic growth.

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