Safety, improving customer experience and engagement and managing an ageing infrastructure will be some of the top priorities for National Highways as its enters Road Investment Strategy 3.
Speaking during his keynote session on day one of Highways UK, Mr Harris emphasised the importance of safety and customer service at National Highways, highlighting the completion of 59 significant projects over the past four and a half years, including the A4 to A8 and A417 projects.
He said National Highways had transitioned from being ‘a road builder, to a customer service provider and said this would also be a key consideration in RIS3 to help enable ‘safer, better connected places’ for everyone.
As an example, he said that last year over 88 billion miles were travelled on the national network last year with 93 major congestion incidents cleared in under an hour.
Mr Harris also cited data as key to the future of the road network-with more detailed data being released to companies such as Google to ensure that key roadside information could be delivered to the dashboards of vehicles in real-time.
He said hundred and thousands of new homes had been developed as a result of key major road schemes and that would continue in the future.
Mr Harris told visitors to Highways UK: “One of our main priorities will be to find new and innovative ways of looking after our ageing asset so that we can continue to help generate billions of pounds for the economy by connecting people, places and businesses.”
He also went to say that National Highways had already achieved a 11% reduction in corporate emissions and the continued development of carbon-negative road surfaces.
Mr Harris said he would continue to engage with the new government to ensure the right funding programme is in place as well as continue to work with SMEs and government catapult centers to tap into innovation and achieve decarbonisation goals.
You can here more from Mr Harris on today’s Highways Voices podcast-our second podcast live from Highways UK-published at 4:30pm.
PIC-ADRIAN TATUM
