Proposals to penalise street works operators that continue to inconvenience pedestrians and traffic, even when works are not under way, are to be put to government officials this week as a possible alternative to lane rental.
Officers at Westminster who have developed the idea of an ‘idle working charge’ see it as a more focused refinement of lane rental and one which stands a better chance of winning support from both sides of the street works divide.
Support, in principle, has come not only from other London boroughs and London First, but also from the National Joint Utilities Group and utilities such as BT, Thames Water and National Grid.
Utilities have complained from the outset that lane rental, based on occupation alone, would be a huge extra cost they would have to pass on to customers.
Westminster transportation director, ~Martin Low~ said there was a strong public argument for the charge, since it would be levied only when the highway was being used inappropriately.
‘What the public doesn’t like is works taking an unnecessarily-long time, and where the utility is just coning them off and leaving them for weeks on end,’ he added. ‘The idle working charge is trying to tackle that sort of inactivity.’
The charge, which would apply equally to utility and highway authority works, and across the whole network, could be used alongside existing section 74 charges for late-running works and the Department for Transport’s mooted permit scheme. According to Low, it would give operators a greater incentive to sharpen up their act and make use of plating or Bailey bridges, where necessary, to speedily reopen footways and carriageways.
The daily charge, paid to the street works authority, would be used to improve co-ordination and management of the network under its network management duty. As an added inducement to good behaviour, there could be a system of credits and debits in which a one-off slip might be offset against good practice elsewhere, suggested Low.
The proposal comes amid confusion as to the best way forward on street works management. After promising a scheme by July 2005, the DfT has put lane rental on hold, and regulations for a permit scheme, now being discussed by the department, are unlikely to emerge until 2007.