Transport User Voice – October 2016 – Shaping the future of England’s roads

26 September 2016

What will road users need in 2020 and beyond?

Highways England has already set out a clear programme for its first five years, up to 2020. But what should come next?

It’s crucial that the next set of plans – the ‘Road Investment Strategy 2’, or RIS2 for short – address what users need from the Strategic Road Network. Transport Focus is helping work out what this is, along with the Department for Transport (DfT), Highways England and the Office of Rail and Road.

Firstly, we are assembling all the evidence needed to make sure the most effective plan emerges. Earlier in the summer we took part in a series of meetings organised by the DfT to bring together all interested parties, including road users. We were part of a workshop session on how the future performance of the network should best be monitored and managed.

We also explained how we are building up the evidence base to make user priorities central to the shape of future investment.

At the heart of this work will be the results of our new Strategic Roads User Survey, backed up by other separate reports, such as our work on road surface quality and experience of smart motorways.

We also have two projects under way set up specifically to inform RIS2:

• user priorities in the Route Strategies

We took a representative sample of users from each of Highways England’s 18 ‘routes’ and looked at investment priorities for each area. We aim to publish the detailed results plus a summary of the overall themes later in the year.

• performance metrics

Working jointly with the Office of Rail and Road, we will ask different types of road user, across the country, what aspects of performance from the network they most want to see measured. This should help ensure that the way we measure the success of RIS2 makes sense to road users, and addresses the things they care about.

 

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