Highways Agency keeps the information flowing

Last week's severe weather brought unprecedented levels of traffic to the Highways Agency's website as people sought out the latest information on road conditions.

The Agency's Traffic England website (highways.gov.uk/trafficinfo), which carries live information on the motorways and major A-roads, received a month's worth of visitors in less than a day on Monday 2 February. At its peak the site was getting around 100,000 visits per hour (compared to 500,000 per month) and kept running throughout the exceptionally busy period.

Staff operating the Highways Agency Information Line (08457 50 40 30), based at the National Traffic Control Centre, have been getting as many as one call every 11 seconds. During the exceptionally severe weather last week the contact centre increased the number of lines and dealt with a growing number of calls over the week as more people wanted to know how the weather could affect their journey.

The Agency's Director of Information, Denise Plumpton, said:

"We were very pleased that as road users turned to us in their hundreds of thousands during these extreme weather conditions we were able to give them the information they needed to plan their journeys across England. Our systems continued to perform admirably and our staff rose to the challenge."

The Highways Agency's National Traffic Control Centre (NTCC), based in Quinton near Birmingham, handles around four terabytes of data received from sensors buried under the road surface, CCTV cameras, Highways Agency patrols, police forces and other agencies - as well as the Met Office desk based in the same room.

The NTCC is able to set motorway warning signs and supplies information to websites and broadcast traffic reports, as well as providing live traffic updates via the Agency's DAB digital and online radio station "Traffic Radio" - trafficradio.org.uk. Audience figures for DAB are not yet available, however figures for those listening on the internet showed a ten-fold increase on Monday 2 February, compared to the previous week.

To cope with the exceptionally high level of demand on its traffic information website the Agency made configuration changes that ensured the continued performance of the service. This meant the site was able to run smoothly while motorists still had access to all the usual information, including being able to check motorway variable message signs and see the weather conditions for themselves on CCTV images.

Data compiled by the National Traffic Control Centre appears to show that many motorists took note of advice to avoid travelling or modify their journeys. During the period of severe weather traffic volumes on the motorways and major trunk roads fell by 24 per cent on Tuesday 3 February and an average of 17 per cent Monday to Friday, compared to the previous snow-free week.
Denise Plumpton added:

"The National Traffic Control Centre was established to help improve traffic flows and to provide road users with the information they need to make more informed journey planning decisions. The staff there work round the clock, come rain or shine - but it is at times like these when that year-round effort really gets noticed by road users.

"The same team will be there in warmer weather too, when our job will be to help people with their journeys during the Easter, Bank Holiday and summer holiday getaways."