SUDS for Roads Whole Life Cost and Whole Life Carbon Toolkit

Following the publication of SUDS for Roads guidance manual, SCOTS and the SUDS Working Party have produced a Whole Life Cost and Whole Life Carbon toolkit to as an addendum to the guidance manual. The Whole Life Cost and Whole Life Carbon toolkit can be used as part of the SUDS selection criteria to provide evidence to support the appropriate selection of SUDS in different developments.

For further details and access to all associated documents go to the BEST PRACTICE page of the web site.

Local roads across Scotland are improving

The condition of roads across Scotland is improving.  This is the outcome of an annual Scotland-wide survey looking at different classes of roads.

The Scottish Road Maintenance Condition Survey (SRMCS) has been carried out every year since 2002.  The Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland (SCOTS) uses the information from the survey to report on the condition of the local public road network.  The results are passed to the individual Councils who report the condition of their local road network.

The 2012 results show that the local authority road network shows a small improvement in condition.  This is welcome news after some years of deterioration.  Severe winters in 2010 and 2011 saw huge amounts of damage to local roads across Scotland.  As a result, a number of Councils increased their investment in road maintenance to meet the challenges the adverse weather left.  The increased investment has seen improvements to local roads right across Scotland.

For the survey, a random 10% sample of the unclassified local road network is surveyed in each region.  These results are then compared to similar types of authorities e.g. cities or islands.  In this way, it reduces any sampling errors.

Bill Barker, Secretary of the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland (SCOTS) said

"Authorities all across Scotland acknowledge the key role that the road network plays in allowing our communities to develop and prosper so the results showing a small increase in the condition of our network are to be welcomed. However as the officers charged with maintaining the most valuable community asset we have we recognise we cannot be complacent and will continually strive to provide the best network we can."

National Road Maintenance Review

The SCOTS Executive welcomes the publication of the Phase 2 Report of the National Road Maintenance Review.

SCOTS members have contributed hugely to all elements of the review process and all of those involved deserve huge thanks for the work they have done. The process has seen a significant increase in the level of understanding across representatives of the 5 partner organisations. The collaborative approach has worked well over the last 6 months and will benefit all who have been involved.

The 30 Options that have been identified for implementation and further work will now be considered at COSLA Leaders’ Meeting on 18 November 2011. With the support of Council Leaders, the Road Maintenance sector is looking forward to taking forward these options into spring/summer 2012 and beyond.

http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/road/maintenance/road-maintenance-review

Operational Managers Pre-Winter Seminar

Presentations from the seminar held in Perth on the 27 October 2011 are available by clicking on the links below.

Moray Council - Involvement of Farmers

Bear Scotland - Boundaries

Fife Council - Salt Spread Rates

Traffic Scotland - Information Service

Scotland Transerv - Collaberation

East Ayrshire - Town Centre Footway Treatments

Scotland Transerv -  Route Based Forecast

Scottish Borders Council - Community Resilience

Amey - Innovations to Service Delivery

Amey - Second presentation

SCOTS Response

COSLA Severe Weather Review

SCOTS are pleased to have provided advice and support to the COSLA Severe Weather Review Task Group and endorses the recommendations contained within the Task Group report.  SCOTS would welcome the opportunity for further involvement to take forward the recommendations which should, if carried through, enhance the preparedness of roads authorities to deal with winter and other severe weather events, and minimise the inevitable disruption these cause.  This is especially relevant since climate change forecasts more severe weather events of all types. 

The report can be found at

http://www.cosla.gov.uk/resilience-planning

SCOTS Response

SCOTS welcomes the work of the Scottish Road Works Commissioner as summarised in his 2010-2011 Annual Report. 

Works on roads are a necessary component of modern life, whether that is to install optic fibre for fast broadband, to maintain energy and water supplies or to keep surfaces safe to walk, cycle or drive on.  On the other hand the pace of life means that disruption to travel caused by roadworks is often unwelcome, regardless as to why the works are being undertaken.

It is right that disruption should be kept to a minimum, so SCOTS is pleased to note the Commissioner’s finding that the trends during the year have generally shown improved performance. The report considers performance on all registered roadworks in all parts of Scotland. What the information from the Scottish Road Works Register cannot provide is a measure of the actual disruption caused by roadworks, which will vary widely depending on the location of the works.  SCOTS too, recognise there is still room for improvement but we would expect that trend to level off.

Where works involve excavation of the road, it is impossible to predict exactly what lies underneath in advance, so it is inevitable that, in some cases, complications will arise and works will take longer than originally estimated. 

In a minority of cases there is no good reason for works taking longer than planned and partly completed works may be left for extended periods with nothing happening on site and without a proper interim reinstatement to allow the road to be reopened.

Such instances do cause concern and SCOTS would encourage local authorities to work with the Commissioner and utilities to reduce those.

The Commissioner’s report deals with roads authority performance and utility company performance.  Typically roads authorities will be working on a road to repair or improve the road whilst utility excavations, even with good quality reinstatements, introduce weaknesses into the road.  SCOTS welcomes the Commissioner’s intention to consider imposing penalties if there has not been a substantial improvement in the quality of utility reinstatements. 

SCOTS is involved in the ongoing Scottish Roads Maintenance Review as mentioned in the Commissioner’s report and welcomes the opportunity afforded, to consider the use of existing legislation to ensure utility companies contribute to the costs of making good long term damage their activities cause to the road network.

Click here for link to report

SCOTS Technical Seminar 2011

The 2011 SCOTS Technical Seminar held at its new location in the Atholl Palace Hotel, Pitlochry on the 19 May, was well attended with 22 of the 32 local authorities represented, along with most of the Regional Transport Partnerships and several associated private sector organisations.

Theme of the event was “Connecting our Communities” and below is a link to the programme and the papers presented at the event.

Seminar Programme

Link to Presentations :

What will future Communities look like

Living Streets

Linking to Communities

Community Led Transport Solutions

Planning Gain

Tax Incr. Funding/Leith Waterfront Dev.

Work of COSLA

Following the cancellation of the HSC conference in Glasgow in May 2011, HAUC(UK) and RAUC(S) are holding a scaled down one day conference in Victoria Quay, Edinburgh, on 2 June 2011. The general theme will be "Sharing from Each Others Experiences" and limited spaces are available.

Click here for more details.

New Vice Chair for SCOTS

Marshall Poulton

Ewan Wallace

At the Executive Committee of the 18 March 2011, Marshall Poulton, Head of Transport at Edinburgh City Council agreed to accept the nomination for the vacant post of the second vice chair in SCOTS.

Marshall covers a large range of activities in his Transport portfolio such as Parking Services, Intelligent Transport Systems, Policy and Planning, Cycling, Walking, Road Safety, Accident Investigation and Prevention, Public Transport, Roads and Structures Design, Flood Management as well as being the Tram Monitoring Officer for Edinburgh.

He will provide valuable support to the current vice chair, Ewan Wallace, Head of Transportation at Aberdeenshire Council at a very busy time for the Society.

Maintaining Scotland's Roads - A Follow Up Report by Audit Scotland

Response from SCOTS

This follow-up audit examined progress on implementing the recommendations contained in Maintaining Scotland’s Roads published by the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General for Scotland in November 2004.

The report looks at 3 key areas of road maintenance; (1) Changes in Condition, (2) Spend, and (3) Management.  It also reviews the extent to which the recommendations in Maintaining Scotland’s Roads (2004)  have been implemented and what has changed as a result.

Importantly the report recognises the likely impact of the severe winter weather of 2009/10 (and indeed 2010/11), although the full impact of these events is unlikely to significantly influence Scottish Road Maintenance Condition Survey (SRMCS) results for a few years.  (This is acknowledged on page 9, paragraph 18 and on, page 15, paragraph 50.)

The report also recognises that “the provision of safe, well-maintained transport links has a key role to play in delivering the Scottish Government’s purpose of creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth”.

While the Society appreciates the production of the report which highlights the infrastructure problems the country faces, it needs to be recognised that authorities have made significant improvements in how they manage their networks in light of reducing budgets.  SCOTS would dispute any assertion that authorities are not attempting to get Best Value from the varying amounts of funding that each authority has made available.

Changes in Condition

It is no surprise that road condition continues to deteriorate, given that expenditure in real terms on Council Roads has fallen by 13 % over the last 5 years (page 13, paragraph 34) and that traffic volumes have increased by 22% since 1996 (page 7, paragraph 10).

SCOTS believes that regular monitoring of road condition is a key stage in the asset management process and, with the full support of all 32 Councils and COSLA, has continued to manage the annual Scottish Road Maintenance Condition Survey. 

The report highlights the SCOTS estimate of the cost to fix all carriageway defects (backlog figure) which was £1.54 billion in 2009.  A new figure is currently being calculated using the most up to date survey results and will be available for all Councils next month (March 2011).  This will be done on a consistent basis for all councils

Road Maintenance Expenditure

As already mentioned, spending in real terms has fallen since the initial report in spite of a significant rise in traffic volumes.  This reflects the fact that inflation in roads maintenance costs has been significantly higher than general inflation.

There has been a significant move from revenue to capital expenditure (Page 14, paragraph 43) across all councils influenced by increasing demand for revenue expenditure in other services.  Levels of capital investment are still significantly lower than they need to be to have any impact on reducing response maintenance (and revenue spend) over the longer term.

The difficult financial climate will further add to these pressures.

Management

A lot of very important work has been done by many councils, supported by SCOTS, to develop asset management plans.  Significant progress has been made in all Councils with 1 year of SCOTS’ 4 year Road Asset Management Project still to run.(Page 19, paragraph 62)

It is acknowledged that not enough work has been done to determine if more partnership working between councils or the private sector will drive down costs.  SCOTS and Transport Scotland are working closely together on this issue, investigating areas where savings and improvements could be made, and the issue will be the theme of the SCOTS Annual Technical Seminar in May this year.  Most councils continue to use competitive tendering for the bulk of their structural road maintenance work, so there is still indirectly a significant involvement of the private sector.

It must not be inferred that any potential to drive down costs will find enough money to stop our carriageways deteriorating.  SCOTS estimated that would need an additional £45 million – a further third of our present expenditure - to do that.

Recommendations

SCOTS is happy to support all the Recommendations of the report (page 4), and in particular:

SCOTS will continue to work with all Councils to complete the Asset Management project within the planned 4 year target

and work with the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland to  consider a national review on how the road network is managed and maintained, with a view to stimulating service redesign and increasing the pace of examining the potential for shared services.

A copy of the Audit Scotland report can be found on the Audit Scotland web site from 16 February 2011

http://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/

New newsletter published

SCOTS members have contributed to the latest issue of the Transport Scotland's Road Research Information newsletter. The newsletter consists of brief news items and details of new publications and forthcoming events in the transport sector. It is available for download in the members' area of this site.

Road Expo Scotland a success

The recent free trade exhibition Road Expo Scotland at Ingleston was, for the third year running, supported by a successful two-day conference organised jointly by Transport Scotland and SCOTS.