The Highways Agency has claimed a 13% reduction in incident-related congestion, after introducing traffic officers.
The HA traffic officer service in the West Midlands, the first launched in England, has exceeded its targets and attended 90% of incidents within 15 minutes and cleared 83% of incidents within half an hour. Uniformed officers work with the police to get traffic moving and have taken over 75% of police motorway duty.
Transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, said: ‘This is excellent news for the travelling public. Traffic officers across the county are now attending about 1,000 incidents a day.