Over the past few years there has been increasing emphasis on reconstruction of the nation's motorways and major trunk roads, as a result of traffic growth and greater axle loadings. With long queues and delays caused by carriageway closures, effective management of traffic flows during maintenance was seen to be of great importance, and the design of traffic management systems for major motorways has gradually been refined, to maximise capacity and reduce safety hazards. However, severe congestion still occurs, particularly at the more difficult sites where there is inadequate capacity and poor alternative routes; the public image of highway maintenance is still at rock bottom. In many ways, the difficult schemes are not the major motorways, but dual 2 lane motorways and heavily trafficked trunk roads, where there is often inadequate carriageway width available to maintain existing traffic flows during reconstruction. Under these circumstances, the traffic management schemes can become very complex, involving many separate stages and perhaps the construction of additional sections of carriageway in order to retain movements at junctions. Based upon the experience of such reconstruction schemes on m2, m20 and a2 the authors will detail the approaches adopted in Kent to keep the traffic moving. They will draw conclusions on the cost, and effectiveness of such complex traffic management systems, and will comment on the standards of signing, coning and markings used. (a) for the covering abstract of the seminar see IRRD 273510.
Abstract