Road management (sometimes known as traffic management or traffic control) normally involves directing traffic and people around a hazard or disruption. By doing so, you ensure that traffic and pedestrians do not come into danger and that everyone gets to where they want to go with minimum delay.
A hazard can include an accident, a road spillage, traffic congestion, a fallen tree, a police cordon, a construction site or roadworks. A disruption may include pre-planned events that disrupt the flow of traffic such as a fête, a street party, a market, a carnival, or anything else that will require road closures or generate a lot of additional traffic. In certain circumstances, some occurrences can be considered both a disruption and a hazard.
A successful road management plan should efficiently direct traffic away from the area of concern and thus significantly reduce the chance of crashes, accidents or conflicts.
Without an efficient road management system in place, you can easily find that traffic congestion begins to build up and accidents happen. Many road management solutions can be used to help mitigate and solve any issues that may arise from the disruption you’re causing. This is where a traffic management company comes in.
A traffic management company plans road management systems and then implements and installs them. If needed, they maintain this road management for long periods, ensuring they remain fit for purpose and that they adapt to any change of circumstances.
Here are just some of the ways road management is essential to keeping the roads safe around your event, hazard or site.
The easiest way to prevent injuries or accidents is to direct people and cars away from where there is danger. Professional road management can do this by putting the right systems in place at the right time.
If there are places where pedestrians and cars are likely to come into close contact with each other, then a decent traffic management plan can ensure that both parties remain safe.
If a main road has an issue on it, then a lane closure or contraflow system may be needed to direct traffic away from where the problem is occurring. If the road needs to be closed off, then a diversion may be used.
If you have closed a road for an event or there are roadworks taking up half the road, then you need to consider what dangers this will generate as traffic builds up. Frustrated motorists that need to be somewhere and now find themselves at a standstill may start to take risks to get themselves moving again. Other cars may get in the way and crashes can occur. If there are pedestrians in the vicinity, they may also get caught up in the chaos and become injured.
Successful road management will pre-warn motorists that they are approaching a hazard or road closure and divert them away from it, ensuring that traffic is kept moving and that dangers are likely to be averted.
Good road management will take into consideration low overhead cables, weak bridges, excavation sites, and other potentially hidden hazards when planning a diversion.
Left to their own devices, drivers and pedestrians trying to navigate around your site or event may not know of these things and find themselves involved in an accident.
Road management systems can provide separate access for construction site plant and machinery so that there is minimum conflict with other road users. It can also ensure that only essential vehicles are on the construction site and that these can move around without causing danger.
These are just some of the ways that road management can ensure safety for road users. If you need road management for your site or event, then please get in touch. We will be happy to help.
