Monitoring National Highways

Biodiversity is defined as the variety of all animal and plant life on earth. It has a vital role in sustaining our natural environment – from providing the air we breathe, to absorbing carbon and underpinning the food chain.

The Office of Rail and Road’s 2021-22 ‘Benchmarking National Highways report’ confirms that average delays on the Strategic Road Network (SRN) increased in all regions of England as traffic levels recovered. However, levels of delay remained below those before the pandemic.

The Office of Rail and Road says National Highways is on course to achieve its overall safety target for the Strategic Road Network in England. The company has also met its Stopped Vehicle Detection technology installation targets; however, the system is failing to meet performance expectations.

This blog explains our work on a new safety report due to be published in December 2022. We expect the first edition to cover both our progress with the Transport Select Committee’s (TSC) recommendations on smart motorways and National Highways’ safety performance on the Strategic Road Network (SRN).

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) says that over the next year, National Highways must: improve its performance against its 10-minute response time on certain sections of smart motorways; provide better evidence of how it is considering the long-term needs of its assets when making renewals decisions across the strategic road network (SRN) – England’s motorways and major A-roads; and provide a

As we prepare for the next RIS we are paying more attention to the quality of National Highways’ plans for the next road period.

There are around 4,500 route miles of strategic road network in England – the motorways and major A roads and of those 4,500 miles, around 370 miles are classed as “smart motorways”.