Transport User Voice – November 2018 – Showcasing new Strategic Roads User Survey at Highways UK

29 October 2018

Our most significant survey of road user satisfaction yet

Since 2015, Transport Focus has represented the interests of those who use motorways and major ‘A’ roads in England – the so-called Strategic Road Network that is managed by Highways England.

The voice of the road user is a vital ingredient if Highways England is to find out – and deliver – what its ‘customers’ need or want, so measuring satisfaction forms a crucial element of understanding which key issues matter. Likewise, such research helps those providing transport infrastructure and services to manage and to plan real, positive changes for the road user.

That’s why satisfaction research among road users has become just as much a core activity for Transport Focus as similar work we do for rail, bus and tram users. It’s also why we will launch the Strategic Roads User Survey (SRUS) – our most significant survey of road user satisfaction since we became involved in the sector – at Highways UK this year (7-8 November), at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham.

While the current National Road Users’ Satisfaction Survey (NRUSS) will continue until the end of 2020, to allow for a period of overlap between the two surveys, SRUS is significantly more than a replacement for the previous survey. It’s been built differently, employs data gathered from interviews with far more road users across the country, and it will support more detailed analysis.

SRUS has been built to permit data to be interrogated or ‘sliced’ in lots of ways at the touch of a button, via a new Transport Focus data hub. This ensures anyone from a fleet manager to a maintenance contractor or member of the public can access the online portal to examine information from a range of perspectives. These include overall satisfaction, journey time, management of roadworks, road surface quality, feelings about safety and driver information at a national, regional or even a specific road level.

By providing a more sophisticated means to evaluate a greater wealth of data about customer satisfaction, we believe that Highways England and others stand to gain a much clearer understanding of customer issues and where they need to concentrate their efforts to deliver positive change for road users.

SRUS will be launched at Highways UK 2018 at the NEC in Birmingham, on Wednesday 7 November at 11.10am on the Burges Salmon stage. You can also visit the Transport Focus exhibition stand (i22) to learn more about the Transport Focus data hub.   

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