2006-2011 LTP Annex 2

Introduction

This strategy (and the phrase "highway network" when used within this strategy) specifically excludes non-tarmac routes on the public rights of way network, which are managed separately.

Why do we maintain the network?

The highway network is maintained to ensure:

• That it is kept in a safe condition for all types of road user; and
• That the asset value is maintained. 

Also, during maintenance operations, it is sometimes appropriate to upgrade the network particularly when this improves safety or, in the case of streetlights, when this is likely to reduce crime or fear of crime.

Road users

Road users can be categorised by mode of travel including:

• Pedestrians, including those with impaired mobility or sight;
• Cyclists;
• Horses;
• Public Transport Vehicles;
• Motorcyclists;
• Cars and vans; and
• Heavy Goods Vehicles.

Road users can also be categorised by reason for travelling including:

• Travel to work;
• Travel to school, or other education establishments;
• Travel to shops;
• Leisure;
• Socialising, particularly by adult pedestrians;
• Playing, particularly by children;
• Tourism;
• Business; and
• Transporting goods and delivering to businesses, shops and houses.

In addition, the road network, particularly in urban areas is used extensively for parking.

What users want

The highway maintenance activities need to take account of all types of user and policies have been developed to ensure that, as far as is possible, the needs of all users are met. The main requirements of users are networks which:

• Are free from dangerous surface defects such as potholes or uneven surfaces;
• Are free from ponding water;
• Are free from branches and vegetation which reduce visibility or which overhang and cause an obstruction;
• Have non skidding surfaces;
• Are free of ice and snow; and
• Can be used without fear of crime.

Users are also helped by signs, lines, studs and lighting, which improve safety, or by signs that provide directions.

Other requirements of users and residents include:

• Roads and pavements free from obstructions which prevent reasonable use of the highway;
• Minimal delays from roadworks;
• Road surfaces which are quiet;
• A highway environment which is attractive; and
• Verges free from injurious weeds particularly Ragwort, which can harm horses.

How Policies are Developed

Warwickshire County Council has used, and continues to use, a variety of methods to ensure we identify the most appropriate and economic ways to maintain the highway network. The main processes are described in the following sections

Historic approach 

In the 1970’s Warwickshire was one of the first authorities to introduce condition assessments for all of its carriageways. The assessment systems have changed over the years but the results have helped to ensure that structural maintenance money has been targeted at the most appropriate roads. The assessments have also enabled us to monitor the success of different maintenance regimes.

Warwickshire County Council has also allowed a high degree of flexibility in the maintenance budget. This has allowed new maintenance approaches to be tried and, more recently, has allowed money to be spent on the roads most in need of treatment even if these are predominantly in one area of the County.

To help ensure that maintenance money was spent appropriately a countywide Warwickshire maintenance policy was produced in 1993.

Materials Policy

Warwickshire County Council has traditionally worked closely with the quarries and with the construction industry to identify the most appropriate highway construction materials. This activity has included the trialling and development of new highway construction products. An example is the Medium Temperature Rolled Asphalt surfacing first used in Warwickshire in 1978 which is now a British Standard product and is due to be introduced into a European Standard. Another example of an appropriate material is the Warwickshire free draining capping layer which has been found to extend the life of new roads and which is based on locally available stone. 

Charles Catt, a materials consultant has helped us over the years, in identifying the best highway construction products. He is a materials expert who sits on British and European Standards Committees. He has recently helped us review the Warwickshire materials policy to ensure it continues to be up to date. His advice has helped to ensure we always use the most cost effective materials in our maintenance operations, and that we carry out appropriate trials of newly available materials.

Where significant highway reconstruction works take place, the County Council actively encourage the recycling of materials on site to minimise the amount of virgin stone and other materials needed from local quarries.

Best Value

Warwickshire was a Best Value Pilot Authority and a review of the highway maintenance activities began even before the Best Value legislation came into force. All aspects of policy and service delivery were reviewed over a period of 3 years. Improvement plans were drawn up and these have been updated annually as the improvements have been introduced.

In 2002 an Audit Commission review concluded that Warwickshire provided a Good (two star) maintenance service with promising prospects for improvement. Our aim is to achieve a three star rating and to be seen as one of the pioneering authorities in achieving value for money in the highway maintenance service.    

Maintenance Policy and Asset Management Plan

The maintenance activities in Warwickshire are carried out in accordance with the published Highway Maintenance Policy (latest edition April 2002) and the Annual Maintenance Plan. These set out the way in which the network is being maintained; list the planned maintenance work in the County for the year ahead and list the roads where maintenance work will be required in future years.

The Highway Maintenance Policy was last reviewed as a consequence of a Best Value Review. Warwickshire is now developing a Transport Asset Management Plan (TAMP) and each section of the maintenance policy is being looked at again to see where improvements can be made in ensuring maintenance money is spent in the most effective way.     

How the County Council ensure continuous improvement

Warwickshire County Council is keen to ensure continuous improvement in the highway maintenance activities. We propose to achieve this by regularly reviewing the service levels and by working with our contractor to identify the most efficient and effective ways to deliver the service. We are also identifying and developing performance indicators, which will be used to monitor success.

Public Satisfaction Surveys

We undertake customer satisfaction surveys to help us understand the needs of residents and other road users. General satisfaction surveys are carried out every two years. MORI helped us develop our first survey in 1999. This was repeated in 2000, in 2002 and 2004.

Where it has been possible to compare our results with others, satisfaction with highway maintenance services in Warwickshire appears to be higher than the average results from similar authorities.

We have set targets for improving the levels of public satisfaction particularly with the lower rated services such as rural carriageways and drainage. Our initial targets set in 2002, to be achieved by 2010, now look over-ambitious and are unlikely to be achieved without spending considerably more money than is likely to be available.

Monitoring public satisfaction will help us target spend on the areas which cause the public most concern. We have identified parts of the service, such as footway condition and drainage, where we feel we still need to know more about residents’ expectations. Further surveys are taking place to give us this information.

We also carry out satisfaction surveys after maintenance work has taken place to identify any unresolved problems. The feedback from these surveys is used to identify improvements that can be made in the service delivery processes.

Streetscape Index

An innovative approach to assessing town centre environments has recently been adopted by Warwickshire. It has been recognised that town centre shopping areas need to be attractive places to encourage people to visit them. From economic and sustainable points of view it is better if people shop at their local centres rather than travelling to other towns or cities outside the county.

As a result a Streetscape Index has been developed which measures the attractiveness of town centres on a variety of factors including the condition of pavements, carriageways, street furniture etc. Targets are set for improvements to the index over time for all of the town centres in Warwickshire.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development issues influence the maintenance policies and activities. The maintenance policies set out in this Strategy take account of the need to reduce casualties, promote more sustainable forms of transport such as cycling and walking, and reduce crime and the fear of crime.

Where maintenance needs to be carried out, the general objectives are to ensure:

• A reduction in the volume of waste material produced from roadworks particularly by reducing the amount of reconstruction and patching;
• Working towards a target of zero waste to landfill; and
• Reducing energy used by the maintenance operations. 

There are also environmental considerations that are becoming increasingly important to the public which need to be taken into account in the maintenance policies. These include:

• Improving the environment, particularly in town centres, as measured by the streetscape index;
• Where traffic volumes are high, providing road surfaces which reduce noise; and
• Where properties are close to the road, providing surfaces that reduce vibrations. 

Highway Maintenance Contract

An improvement activity identified in the Highway Maintenance Best Value Review was the introduction of a new maintenance-partnering contract. A target price pain gain contract with continuous improvement began in May 2004. The contract, awarded to Carillion plc covers all of the highway maintenance activities and requires Warwickshire County Council and Carillion to work together, during the seven years of the contract to ensure value for money. This is to be achieved through the identification and elimination of all forms of waste, which causes unnecessary cost.

We believe that this is the first time that highway maintenance has been included in such a contract although we know of at least one other Council who has now prepared a similar contract.

Benchmarking

To help ensure that the highway maintenance money is spent in the best possible way, we undertake benchmarking with other authorities. We were a founder member of the Midlands Best Value Group, which is now the Midlands Service Improvement Group (MSIG), and we participate in the meetings of the County Surveyors Society Best Value Group.

The activities being benchmarked through MSIG include Structural Maintenance, Street Lighting, Winter Maintenance, Insurance Claims and New Roads and Streetworks Act activity. The MSIG Structural Maintenance Group recently commissioned OPUS consultants to help participating authorities develop their asset management plans.

By identifying best practice the benchmarking activity helps with the development and revision of policy and the identification of better management practices. A major change in policy in recent years resulting from our benchmarking activity involved increasing our surface dressing budget to ensure we treated roads before they deteriorated and needed a more expensive maintenance treatment. 

Structural Maintenance Activities

Structural Maintenance includes planned surfacing, reconstruction, surface dressing and slurry sealing activities.   

Principal Road Carriageways

Best Value Performance Indicator 223 shows that there are a lower percentage of principal roads in Warwickshire in need of repair than in other similar authorities. There are believed to be two main reasons for this:

• Warwickshire has always invested in its principal road network, particularly by overlaying the rural principal roads; and
• A number of principal roads were formerly Trunk Roads that were in good condition when they were transferred into Warwickshire’s responsibility.

Although our Best Value performance indicator may be relatively low we still believe it is necessary to keep up the investment in the network. The condition indicator suggests that at least 28km of the network is in need of treatment. At present we believe that we need to be treating at least 6 km of the network each year and that the average length treated should be higher.

The problem we have in identifying exactly how many roads we should be treating in future years is due to the uncertainty of how roads will deteriorate. An examination of the list of principal road maintenance schemes in the 2000 LTP shows that some roads on the list have not deteriorated in the intervening years to require treatment while other roads not on the list have needed to be treated. As a result our policy will be to review the condition of all the principal roads each year to help us decide which roads require treatment. To help in this we will also draw up a list of all sections of road which the surveys indicate have defects and develop methods of charting their rate of deterioration over time (this process should be made easier when the results from the new SCANNER survey are available)   

Non-Principal Road Carriageways

The latest results from the condition surveys, which provide the Best Value Performance Indicators BVPI 224a and 224b, are that about 17% of the network has surface defects above the indicator threshold. This represents about 550 km of the network.  

It is clear that there is a difference between the condition of the urban and rural non-principal roads in Warwickshire. This is primarily because most urban roads have been constructed to standards that anticipated their use by modern vehicles. They have stone foundations and several layers of blacktop surfacing. Many of the rural roads in Warwickshire began as stone tracks and, although over the years most have had some surfacing added, this was often no more than surface dressing. Many non-principal roads in the county still have less than 50mm of blacktop over a stone foundation.

Rural Roads

For the past 15 years there has been a policy of upgrading rural roads by adding extra blacktop surfacing. Without the upgrading roads needed to be patched and surface dressed about every 7 years. Our aim has been to add sufficient blacktop to roads to increase their life to at least 20 years (with a surface dressing required after about 10 years). Our surfacing records, which now go back 20 years, show that there have only been a few roads which have required further treatment before the 20 years and these have all deteriorated as a result of settlement in dry periods.

Our present target is to upgrade at least 50 km of non-principal rural roads each year. In 2004/05 £2 million of Prudential Borrowing was used to increase the length of road which could be treated. This has allowed us to ensure that roads with severe settlement were restored to a smooth surface.

There is some uncertainty about whether upgrading 50 km of road a year is sufficient to deal with the backlog of maintenance work. 50 Km represents about 1/35^th of the rural road network. A five-year list of roads in need of treatment was drawn up in 2003. This was updated in 2004. As part of the development of the Warwickshire TAMP it is proposed to extend this list to include roads that are expected to need treatment in the next 10 years.

Over the years there has been a steady increase in the amount of traffic on the minor rural roads. This has been caused by: Increases in farm machinery; increasing numbers of rural businesses; growth in the numbers of people living in rural areas and growth in tourism. These increases in traffic have caused the edges of a number of narrow rural roads to deteriorate. When verge widths allow such roads can be widened to upgrade them so that they can be used safely by modern traffic.  However, where the verge is used for widening of the carriageway, if possible, provision should be made for non-motorised users who may previously have used the verge.

At present Warwickshire upgrades about 5km of narrow rural roads each year. Roads are treated when road edges have deteriorated to a stage that they are considered to be a danger to the travelling public. The process of widening these roads is expensive compared to resurfacing and so the length of road that can be treated annually is limited.

A list of roads that may require this treatment in the next 5 years has been drawn up. As part of the development of the Warwickshire TAMP this will be extended to include those roads likely to need treatment in the next 10 years.      

Urban Roads

Most urban non-principal carriageways in Warwickshire require little more than timely surface dressing to keep them in a serviceable condition. There are, within each urban area, roads that are showing signs of structural failure. These are generally on routes to industrial estates. A list of these roads has been produced and is updated annually.

It has been identified in our new materials policy that, due to recent developments in materials, 20 mm overlays may be a more cost effective treatment than surface dressing on older urban roads. This process will therefore be trialled.

As part of the development of the Warwickshire TAMP we will draw up an age profile of the urban non principal roads to help us predict future maintenance needs.

Footway Maintenance

It is estimated that there are 4000km of footways in Warwickshire. It is believed that most new footways, as long as they are slurry sealed after about 20 years, should last for at least 40 years before requiring overlaying or reconstructing. In town centres footways tend to be upgraded about every 15 years to improve the environment for pedestrians. The life of block paved or slab footways in town centres is also reduced by constant utility works.

Warwickshire County Council regularly reviews the condition of all footways and undertakes maintenance work on those whose condition is likely to cause problems for regular users. Work programmes take account of the numbers of people using footways and the fact that old people are less able to cope with uneven surfaces than young people. Although there are no known adverse trends in the numbers of trips on footways there are several reasons to believe that there will be a need in the future to improve the overall condition of the footway network. These are:

• Levels of satisfaction with footway condition are lower than for the condition of urban carriageways;
• With the population aging there will be more people in the future who are less able to cope with any uneven paths; and
• Warwickshire County Council is keen to improve conditions for pedestrians to encourage walking rather than using the car (to increase fitness and reduce pollution and congestion)   

To help us identify exactly how improved footway maintenance can be most effective we need to know exactly what it is about the footway network that people are unhappy about. It might be uneven surfaces but it could also be: poor drainage which cause puddles in wet weather; cars parked on footways; high vehicle speeds on carriageways leading to a feeling of danger; vehicle noise or fumes or poor street scene. We will carry out surveys to establish exactly what we need to do to improve satisfaction and to encourage walking on existing footways.

We also propose, as part of the development of the Warwickshire TAMP, to draw up an age profile of all footways to help us predict future maintenance needs.

Key Pedestrian Routes

Warwickshire has one of the highest figures for Best Value Performance Indicator 187 Condition of Footways (with this Indicator a high score equates to poor performance).  The footways that Warwickshire includes in this survey are primarily the town centre footways, which represent about 1% of the total footway network. There are a number of reasons for our high BVPI result:

• Many of our town centre footways were laid with block paving in the 1980’s. These are probably coming to the end of their life;
• Redevelopment work and the actions of the utilities have affected the condition of footways particularly in Leamington Spa and Nuneaton; and
• Old historic stone setts, paving and kerbs, such as those found on footways in the centre of Stratford-upon-Avon, are often inherently uneven and, unless they are replaced, they will not conform to the survey requirements of BVPI 187.      

Improvements to footways in town centres are proposed in the next few years. For instance 2-3 km of the footways in Leamington Spa town centre was re-laid in 2005 in conjunction with the Leamington Town Centre Improvement Project. Other actions to be taken include:

• A reassessment of the maintenance process to ensure that minor defects discovered in footways are repaired more quickly; and,
• A reassessment of the footways to be included in the indicator to ensure that all the heavily used footways are included and those footways, which are not on key routes, are excluded.

Cycleway Maintenance

Maintenance considerations are also of high importance for cycle routes, as poorly maintained routes are unlikely to encourage more people to cycle. We will ensure that appropriate maintenance regimes are established at the development stage of new off-carriageway cycle routes.  Key issues include ensuring overhanging vegetation is cut back and that routes are swept at regular frequencies to keep them free from broken glass and other debris. 

Routine Maintenance 

The following are some of the important routine maintenance activities:

Winter Maintenance

During the winter months selected carriageways are gritted to prevent ice forming on them. Warwickshire County Council has identified a higher than average percentage of roads (41%) which we believe need to be treated to ensure the road network can be used safely in icy weather.

Recent service improvements include:

• Trials in the 2004/05 winter to grit cycleways in urban areas; and
• The use of Safecoat, a molasses coated salt to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of spreading salt on the roads.

Patching

Our policy is to repair all potholes in carriageways, carriageway edges, footways and cycleways that are felt to be a danger to the travelling public. Warwickshire County Council has adopted national guidelines to identify dangerous potholes.

Patching is also used to:

• Restore carriageway profile where settlement has occurred; and
• Repairing or reconstructing areas of carriageway prior to surface dressing or slurry sealing operations.

We have a number of maintenance policies that are designed to reduce the future need for patching. These include

• Improving the structural condition of roads (particularly rural roads);
• Surface dressing roads which have become porous but which are still in a good structural condition to prevent them deteriorating into potholes; and
• Widening selected rural roads that have substantial edge defects due to their inadequate width. 

As part of the development of the Warwickshire TAMP it is proposed to review the patching decision process to ensure that patching is only carried out if it is the most cost effective maintenance treatment. The review will also include decisions about patching sizes, timing and treatments.

Drainage

At present all gullies are emptied at least once a year. A GPS system on the new contractor’s gully emptier is providing information that will allow us to review the current emptying frequency.

Action is taken to ensure blocked drainage systems are cleared. Drainage improvements or major drainage repairs are undertaken on a priority basis, depending on the danger arising from flooding incidents.

Grass Cutting

Warwickshire County Council undertakes grass cutting to maintain visibility and to help provide a useable verge for pedestrians. At present grass is cut up to 3 times a year.

Injurious weeds (particularly Ragwort) are removed during an annual coordinated programme that has been running since 2003.

Signs and lines

Our policy is to keep signs and lines maintained in a safe condition, visible day and night and free from graffiti. Where signs are damaged or stolen or need renewal they are replaced if a decision is taken that they are still required.

Periodic reviews of signs and lines are made to remove those which are no longer serving a useful purpose and to update those which need to be improved.

Safety Inspections

Our contractor Carillion carries out safety inspections. This process allows a quicker response to dealing with dangerous defects. It is proposed to develop a process for Carillion to automatically deal with minor defects without having to get permission to do so.

Public contacts

We encourage public contacts particularly to ensure that we are given early warning of any problems on the highway network. We use a County Council call centre to ensure that we deal with the initial contacts efficiently and effectively. We have developed performance indicators to monitor the success of our contact procedures.   

Street Lighting

The National Picture

Serious problems are developing nationally due to the ever-increasing age and associated deterioration in the condition of the street lighting stock within the UK. There are some 6.2 million street lighting columns in the UK that represent a replacement cost of around £4,000m.

It is estimated that the recent annual spend on replacement has been around £40m nationally, which equates to a replacement rate of 1% or a column life of 100 years. Based on a 25-year design life, a replacement rate of 4% is actually required.

As a result of the size of the backlog and continued deterioration of the lighting stock, Central Government have recommended that those columns most at risk be identified. Column inspection, testing and replacement programmes will need to be planned on the basis of priorities established using appropriate risk management techniques.

The Warwickshire Situation

In Warwickshire there are over 50,000 lights, illuminated signs and bollards maintained by the County. As in other authorities, there are also lights maintained by District and Parish Councils.

The purpose of lighting is to ensure the safety of the travelling public and to reduce crime and fear of crime. Although the bulk of the maintenance budget is spent in maintaining the existing lighting stock, at least £50,000 a year is spent on upgrading the lighting stock to help improve safety and particularly to reduce crime and fear of crime. This level of expenditure on actual replacement in Warwickshire is currently equivalent to around 0.5% of the network, rather than the 4% level recommended by Government. The need to address this issue (and indeed how it could be funded) will be considered as part of the development of the County's Transport Asset Management Plan.

The County Council work with the Police and others through the Community Safety Partnerships to help identify where improvements can be made. We also work with District Councils, and particularly Warwick District, which has provided funds for lighting improvements to ensure that Safety Cameras are able to operate effectively.

In general lighting upgrades involve increasing the numbers of light columns and/or improving the lighting source. The upgrading of old Mercury lighting can bring about energy and environmental savings but the upgrading of the more common low-pressure sodium lights involves an increase in energy use (although there can be some savings in repair costs as new lights can be more reliable). Warwickshire County Council is beginning to trial white light sources such as metal halide and compact fluorescent lamps. At present this new technology is not sufficiently reliable to enable it to be widely adopted. We are having more success with the use of LED’s for Belisha Beacons. They cost substantially more than normal bulbs but use less energy and require less maintenance. 

At present the general condition of the lighting stock is fair although there is a slow but steady increase in its average age. There is also a very evident backlog of painting which makes the lighting columns appear in a poor condition.

A review of all columns has been carried out in the past two years. Columns that are in poor condition have been identified and a list of those likely to require repair in the next few years has been drawn up. The age profile of the existing columns shows that in about 10 years time there will be substantially more columns reaching the end of their life than there are now. This is because during the 1980’s a substantial number of the lighting columns in Warwickshire were replaced.

The local electricity company owns most of the cables, which provide electricity to lights and signs. There are, however, some lengths of cables, particularly on rural roundabouts, which are owned by the County Council. Our policy is to renew cables when they deteriorate and become unreliable. At present we have to renew the cables on at least one rural roundabout a year.

Warwickshire County Council was one of the first authorities to lower their street lighting energy bill by seeking tenders for the supply of energy. This process has continued and Warwickshire now use the expertise of the Eastern Shires Purchasing Consortium to secure competitive prices for the energy supply.  

Casualty Reduction

One of the main purposes of the highway maintenance activities is to maintain the roads in a safe condition for all types of road user. Our policies have been formulated with this in mind. Maintenance activities designed to ensure safety include:

• Keeping carriageways and footways free from potholes and other defects;
• Maintaining drainage systems to eliminate standing water on carriageways;
• Gritting and snow clearance;
• Street lighting;
• Grass cutting to maintain visibility;
• Tree maintenance;
• Maintaining signs, lines and road studs; and
• Surfacing roads to ensure adequate skid resistance.

To ensure that the maintenance activities play a full part in helping to achieve the Council’s target of reducing casualties. Maintenance policies are being reviewed. Possible changes identified so far to reduce casualties are

• Maintaining road junctions (particularly in rural areas) with higher than average levels of accidents, to a higher standard than elsewhere;
• Improving skid resistance on roads by introducing 6mm aggregate surfacing materials in urban areas; and
• Improving super elevation on bends when surfacing is being carried out.

Action will be taken wherever it can be shown that the expected casualty savings financially justifies it.

Targets, Indicators and Monitoring

The targets and indicators that will be used to measure our progress in implementing the Highway Maintenance Strategy are as follows:

1. Principal Road condition (BV223) – percentage of local authority road network where structural maintenance should be considered (previously BV96).

A target of no overall deterioration in the principal road condition has been set for 2010/11. This is considered realistic and challenging given planned funding levels.

2. Non-Principal Classified Road condition (BV224a) – percentage of the local authority non-principal classified road network where maintenance should be considered (previously BV97a).

There is no requirement for a target to be set in the Local Transport Plan submissions. Targets may be required when baseline data for 2005/06 is available.

3. Unclassified Road condition (BV224b) – percentage of the local authority unclassified road network where structural maintenance should be considered (previously BV97b).

A target of no overall deterioration in the unclassified road condition has been set for 2010/11. This is considered realistic and challenging given planned funding levels.

4. Footway condition (BV187) – percentage of footway network where structural maintenance should be considered.

Over the past two years the footway condition has improved reflecting the increased level of investment in footway maintenance. Our target seeks to further improve the condition of footways, due primarily to the introduction of a new maintenance regime. This stretched target reflects our commitment to improving conditions for pedestrians by targeted maintenance to minimise and reduce insurance claims.

The aim is to achieve a 5% improvement each year.