Principal A-road condition
The local highway network is the most valuable publicly owned asset managed by West Sussex County Council. The strategic approach seeks to optimise the value of West Sussex’s highway infrastructure over its whole life. The Principal A-Road network includes the major roads within the County that provide large scale transport links, and support the regional and local economy. Through effective long term planning and forecasting of the principal roads performance we strive to minimise and prevent expensive short-term repairs, promoting the timely investment in maintenance based on need. This approach aims to retain a steady state in the poor (red) condition of principal roads, whilst increasing the overall percentage of roads in a good (green) condition.
We aim to keep the poor A-road conditions to 5% or less.
September 2020 performance
The results of the 2020
condition survey of the Principal A-Road network confirms that our aim to keep
those A-Roads considered poor and requiring maintenance to below 5% is being
achieved. The continued monitoring of
the A-Road condition will inform future maintenance funding investment
decisions.
The measure of road condition used by government to monitor roads is the percentage of the network that needs maintenance. Further analysis of the condition data aligns to the percentage of the network that the West Sussex highway engineers and asset data and information team calculate to be in a “red” “amber” or “green” condition based on its Road Condition Indicator (RCI) score.
In general,
- GREEN defines carriageway in a good state of
repair;
- AMBER is where some deterioration is
apparent, which should be investigated to determine the optimum time for
planned maintenance, and
- RED for carriageway in poor overall condition.
* Data in graph is rounded up.
Principal A-Road Condition Index (2019 to 2021)
Actions
The draft 2020/21 Highway and Transport Delivery Programme includes investment of over £2.75m focused on the resurfacing of Principal Roads in a poor condition in West Sussex. Key Decision approval of this draft programme is expected in February 2020, ahead of individual scheme delivery during 2020/21.
Overall, 12.5% of the roads in West Sussex are categorised as Principal (A-Class) roads. In general these are the major distributor roads, between the main towns and urban centres (not including Motorways or Trunk Roads.) Each year we survey 100% of the A-roads using Scanner Survey vehicles. The continued monitoring of the A-Road condition informs future maintenance funding investment decisions.