Skip to main content

International Safer Roads Conference focus on highway maintenance funding

UK road planners and engineers attending next month’s International Safer Roads Conference will find out how to avoid losing part of their highway maintenance funding from the British Government. In the Department of Transport document, ‘Gearing up for efficient highway delivery and funding’, Robert Goodwill, MP, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, warns that local authorities will be incentivised to take up asset management to make the most from allocated resources.
April 30, 2014 Read time: 3 mins
UK road planUK road planners and engineers attending next month’s International Safer Roads Conference will find out how to avoid losing part of their highway maintenance funding from the British Government.

In the Department of Transport document, ‘Gearing up for efficient highway delivery and funding’, Robert Goodwill, MP, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, warns that local authorities will be incentivised to take up asset management to make the most from allocated resources.

It is proposed that every highway authority will receive baseline funding, with additional funds, as much as 10%, for those with an asset management strategy in place.

The Roads Minister will be addressing the Conference, which is being held in Cheltenham, western England, from the 18 – 21 May 2014. UK delegates will be able to share best practice to help prepare a strategy to avoid losing any vital funding.
The underlying theme of the Conference is ‘saving lives through safer roads’ and delegates are travelling from around the world to share their experience and knowledge.

Dr Chris Kennedy, chairman of the organising committee, says they will be discussing the ever-changing issues of climate change and increasing traffic flows, as well as how types of vehicles place more pressure on existing materials and practices.

“The papers being presented also look at how to achieve more for less in what are challenging times”, he explained.

The 4th International Safer Roads Conference is co-sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation, 1009 New Zealand Transport Agency and 3312 WDM Limited. Delegates will consist of engineers, practitioners, policy makers and other professionals from central and local governments, academics from universities and research organisations, consultants and contractors.

Dr Kennedy says the Conference will help encourage authorities to become more innovative to achieve best value in road and runway safety maintenance and practices.

“Studies have shown that driver behaviour can be linked with the road environment to produce innovative ways to reduce accident rates and these changes also need to use the appropriate surface materials.

“Many countries have been showing reductions in headline numbers of killed and seriously injured, but as the opening keynote speaker from the Dutch Institute of Road Safety will be discussing, these headline figures often fail to show that the number of vulnerable users continues to rise,” he said. “No country can afford to be complacent about its road safety record.”

Full details of the Conference can be found on %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal www.saferroads.org.uk Visite Safe Roads website false http://www.saferroads.org.uk/ false false%>

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Sumitomo intends to boost its paver sales worldwide, as vice president international sales Ichiro Shimada explained
    January 6, 2017
    Sumitomo Construction Machinery intends to continue boosting export markets – a project that has been in hand for three years – according to vice president international sales Ichiro Shimada. “Sumitomo is dominant in Japan and we have 70% market share. But the market size is limited, maybe 400 units/year. We’re putting a lot of effort into the Chinese market,” said Shimada. Europe is another key market for Sumitomo and the firm is focussing on countries such as France, Poland and Switzerland, while it has a
  • Sumitomo intends to boost its paver sales worldwide, as vice president international sales Ichiro Shimada explained
    April 18, 2012
    Sumitomo Construction Machinery intends to continue boosting export markets – a project that has been in hand for three years – according to vice president international sales Ichiro Shimada. “Sumitomo is dominant in Japan and we have 70% market share. But the market size is limited, maybe 400 units/year. We’re putting a lot of effort into the Chinese market,” said Shimada. Europe is another key market for Sumitomo and the firm is focussing on countries such as France, Poland and Switzerland, while it has a
  • JCB’s new VM117D makes North America debut
    January 6, 2017
    JCB’s stylish new soil compactor - the VM117D – has made its North American market debut at Conexpo 2014. With an 11tonne operating weight and equipped with JCB’s 93kW Tier 4 Interim Ecomax engine, said to deliver a 10% fuel saving, the single-drum VM117D can be used for a wide range of work in infrastructure and housing projects. It has a smooth drum as standard with pad foot drums as an option. “We’ve improved the compaction criteria, including amplitude, frequency, centrifugal force, static linear lo
  • ALARM Survey: UK maintenance backlog continues despite funding boost
    March 23, 2016
    Highways departments in England and Wales have yet to feel the benefit of the UK government’s commitment to spend €7.6 billion (£6 billion) on local road maintenance between 2015 and 2021. In fact, overall road budgets have dropped by 16%, according to the annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey of highway bosses in England and Wales, conducted by the Asphalt Industry Alliance. This is reflected in the increase in average budget shortfalls – the difference between the money needed to ma