JAM: Are England’s roads more reliable?
More than three-quarters of journeys on England’s motorways and ‘A’ roads were ‘on time’ in 2012/13, statistics show – displaying slight improvement on the previous year.
Department for Transport data indicates 77.2% of journeys on Highways Agency-managed roads last financial year were not delayed, a 0.1% increase from 2011/12.
However, annual reliability – the percentage measure of ‘on time’ journeys – decreased in each of the twelve months in 2012/13, to its lowest-ever point.
The Department for Transport claim these reliability chances are predominantly due to changes in rainfall and periods of heavy snowfall relative to the previous year.
Despite this, provisional data also shows 81.7% of ‘strategic road network’ journeys during April were also ‘on time’, up 1.6% from April 2012.
This small increase in reliability for 2012/13 relates to lower levels of rainfall in April 2013 compared to April 2012, the Department for Transport claim.
Reliability was measured by the percentage of journeys that are ‘on time’, where a journey represents travel between adjacent junctions on the network.
An ‘on time’ journey was defined as one which was completed within a set reference time, based on historic data on that particular section of road.
The data is based on journey times estimated using in-vehicle Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and flows estimated using automatic traffic counters.
The ‘strategic road network’ accounts for just 2% of all roads in England, but carries around a third of all traffic.
Image courtesy of Documentally, with thanks.
