www.highwaysmagazine.co.uk


APRIL 2014 Communication is key


In March, the Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) published its 2014 Better Connected review of public sector websites and focused on roadworks communication. Elgin chairman Shane O’Neill analyses these fi ndings in the context of a winter where fl ooding has caused a record number of road closures and diversions, and asks what communications challenges face local highway authorities and utility companies


What did the SOCITM survey fi nd? It found that 91 per cent of the public fi nd their information via search engines like Google and not by going straight to the highway authority or other offi cial websites. It also recorded the public’s lowest satisfaction rating for fi nding information about closures and diversions.


This winter’s unprecedented (at least in our memory) fl ooding once again drew attention to why our information systems are not fi t for 21st century purpose. Ninety six per cent of our roads are the responsibility of more than 200 local highway authorities, each with their own closures and diversions and each with different approaches to getting this information out to the public.


When SOCITM published its annual survey this year it had a special focus on highways information. Unsurprisingly, it found that 91 per cent of the public fi nd their information via search engines like Google and not by going straight to the highway authority or other offi cial websites. It also recorded the public’s lowest satisfaction rating for fi nding information about closures and diversions.


Some local highways authorities have reasonable websites with map based information (surely the way the public now expect to see and quickly understand this type of information?). But often this lies buried among thousands of other web pages. Councils


“People need information


at their fi ngertips, whether via their smart phones or via in-car navigation systems. The


government and politicians know this because they have been talking for years about the problem”


A map showing traffi c incidents and roadworks in Devon


are responsible for 600 different services and their websites are a dense thicket of web pages. Other offi cial websites post weekly lists of planned closures – no use for emergency information and, actually, if we are honest, no use at all other than for desk bound researchers.


The result, and the motorists’ most common experience, is that the public’s fi rst knowledge of a closure and diversion is when they sit puzzled at the back of a long traffi c queue or, if they are at the head of the queue, the glimpse of a yellow diversion sign.


Getting information across


The SOCITM report and another winter’s disruptions to our highways highlight once again the failure to communicate effectively information about the inevitable disruptions to our roads. Yellow signs and notices buried in council websites – or even in the small print of unread local newspapers – are no longer an adequate way of communicating in the 21st century.


People need information at their fi ngertips, whether via their smart phones or via in-car navigation systems. The government and politicians know this because they have been talking for years about the problem. In March 2012, Minister Norman Baker held a Satnav Summit at which he urged that “something must be done” to communicate potholes information to the public. But nothing has actually been done by government to try and


get local information about potholes, closures and diversions into smart phones, web services and Satnav information services.


Luckily some enterprising local highway authorities haven’t waited for government initiatives and are managing to publish their closures and diversions out to the public and instantly via the web.


Devon County Council have published all their current and planned road closures and diversions for the next 12 months.


Staffordshire took the issue of local area network and strategic network coordination into its own hands and published both the Highways Agency and its own diversions live on their interactive map – with the data being widely syndicated in real time.


And Stoke is proactively tweeting out every closure and diversion as well as publishing them live on a national interactive map.


In fact more than 30 local highways authorities are now addressing what the SOCITM report has said is the public’s greatest dissatisfaction with highways information – real-time notifi cation of emergency closures and diversions.


Perhaps next winter we will see a radical change in the way the whole country deals with alerting the public to disruptions among 96 per cent of the highways networks. If it does it will be due to the actions of local highway authorities and not the grandstanding of politicians.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64