A21 Route Treatment Project Feasibility Study Report
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A21 Route Treatment Project Feasibility Study Report May 2016 Prepared for: A21 Route Treatment Project Feasibility Study Report @ Mouchel Consulting 2015 A21 Route Treatment Project Feasibility Study Report Executive Summary Highways England has commissioned Mouchel Consulting to undertake a feasibility study of additional effective safety, accessibility and sustainability improvements that will work with, and complement, the installation of Average Speed Enforcement Cameras (ASEC), between Scotney Castle roundabout (south of Lamberhurst), and Hastings (Baldslow) on the A21. The A21 is an all-purpose trunk road serving as the main access route to Hastings from London and the North. The route forms a north-south link between the M25 at Junction 5 near Sevenoaks in West Kent and the Hastings Borough boundary on the south coast in East Sussex. The northern section of the route between the M25 and Lamberhurst is mostly dual carriageway. This study concentrates on the A21 south of the Lamberhurst bypass, from Scotney Castle roundabout to Baldslow. This 26km section of the route is a predominantly rural single carriageway which is considered to be of poor quality. It serves a number of villages and settlements in addition to forming part of the strategic road network. The main settlements on the route have a high degree of direct frontage access and there are also agricultural accesses throughout. Conflict between strategic through traffic and local trips, combined with the below- standard highway alignment, results in collision rates which are above the national average for severity ratio. As the route is single carriageway, recovery time from incidents is slow and this impacts on journey time reliability. Pedestrian facilities are generally only provided in and on the approach to the more built up village settlements and very little designated provision is available for Non- Motorised Users (NMU’s) to cross the A21. With the exception of village locations, there are generally no clearly identifiable footways serving bus stops, and a number of the existing bus stops are not sign posted. The only cycle facilities within the study area are at Scotney Castle Roundabout, and no specific equestrian facilities exist within the highway boundary. In the project brief, Highways England recognise that the A21 is a challenging route due to its complexity and the need to treat the route issues holistically. There are no easy blanket fixes and large scale projects have fallen short of the required economic benefit threshold at value management workshops in the past. In addition to these Page (ii) @ Mouchel Consulting 2015 A21 Route Treatment Project Feasibility Study Report challenges, the A21 runs through areas sensitive to environmental concerns including the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, (AONB). The project brief also states that the A21 has the worst personal injury collision record on the trunk road network and there is an imperative to improve that using a variety of measures. Currently Highways England has no major projects programmed for the route and as such there is an urgent need to address the issues on-line. The key aim of this desk based feasibility study is to propose consistent and strategic measures to improve safety, accessibility and sustainability along this section of the A21. This approach has been developed to compliment the planned installation of average speed enforcement cameras and Managing Agent Contractor, Balfour Beatty Mott MacDonald, (BBMMjv) safety and cycle facility improvement schemes. In addition to these known schemes, this report identifies potential route wide measures and specific treatments which may be considered and taken forward for outline design development and assessment as future schemes. It is intended that the combination of bespoke local schemes and consistent route treatments (in areas such as signing and road markings) will create an operational regime which is easily understood by road users, encourages compliance with speed restrictions and therefore contributes to improvements in the road safety performance of the A21. In order to understand the route and develop our proposals, data collection, review and analysis has been undertaken including a review of two reports detailing the BBMMjv proposed safety and cycle facility improvement schemes. (See Section 1.3 and Chapter 3 for further details). Following the review of existing reports, analysis of the most recent five years (2010-2014) of personal injury collision data for this section of the A21 was undertaken from the STATS19 database and this is reported in the A21 Collision Analysis Report, Mouchel Consulting, April 2016 . (See Section 4.1 for further details.) Information on existing Non-Motorised User (NMU) facilities was sourced and collated in the A21 Route Treatment, Lamberhurst to Hastings, NMU Context Report, Mouchel Consulting, April 2016, which includes identification of NMU objectives. (See Section 5.1) Stakeholders were also consulted through the Average Speed Enforcement Camera (ASEC) Working Group. Page (iii) @ Mouchel Consulting 2015 A21 Route Treatment Project Feasibility Study Report A21 route assessment workshops were then carried out. The first of these workshops focused on the identification of proposals to improve safety along the route and the second focused on NMU improvements. The workshops enabled the Mouchel project team to better understand the route, the existing layout and constraints, and they highlighted the current lack of route consistency. Following the safety workshop a strategy for measures to improve consistency and asset condition that would have positive safety benefits when applied for the entire route was developed, and a tiered standardised safety treatment structure for both the mainline and at junctions was developed. This tiered structure was then applied to address the individual areas which were identified as requiring intervention during the workshop. Chapter 4 of this report details our route safety proposals. A similar route wide strategy was developed for measures to improve accessibility and sustainability following the second workshop, and specific areas were also identified for treatment. Chapter 5 of this report details the NMU proposals. The main recommendations of this feasibility study include the following: - Undertake a detailed network review and technical surveys for the full length of the study area to identify and then implement measures to improve consistency and driver understanding of the route to encourage appropriate driver behaviour. (E.g. signing, road markings, consolidation of street furniture, coloured and high friction surfacing and visibility improvements.) - Regularly undertake all maintenance treatments which are likely to have road safety benefits (including replacing areas of worn road surfacing and road markings, cleaning signs and cutting back vegetation which is obscuring visibility and signing). - As the dark collisions without street lighting are above the national average, the installation of intelligent, or self-lit, road studs may be beneficial in some locations and should be investigated further. - Undertake a detailed review of direct vehicular access onto the A21 from private properties and farms to determine whether any accesses can be rationalised or relocated onto local roads. - Consider a local road safety awareness campaign for the A21 targeted at both motorised and non-motorised users. - Consider further development of the proposals at identified safety treatment sites in Section 4.4 of this report. Page (iv) @ Mouchel Consulting 2015 A21 Route Treatment Project Feasibility Study Report - Apply the standardised safety treatment structure for junctions and the mainline carriageway at areas where collision numbers and severity require intervention as a starting point to develop future improvement schemes. - Undertake a network review and survey focussing on accessibility and sustainability for the full length of the study area to identity opportunities to locally improve NMU facilities and identify wider existing and predicted future NMU usage patterns, including trip origins, key destinations and desire lines. - Consult with User Groups and work in partnership with Local Authorities to identify opportunities to provide new NMU facilities (to connect key destinations, other NMU routes and public transport) as off carriageway routes, outside the highway boundary where appropriate. Cycle facilities in particular should be provided as off carriageway routes for safety reasons. - Undertake specific reviews and surveys for the full length of the study area to identify and then implement measures to improve NMU facilities (e.g. signing, upgrading footways, consolidation of street furniture, upgrading access to bus stops and bus stop facilities and NMU crossings.) - Regularly undertake maintenance treatments to NMU facilities (including replacing areas of worn surfacing and road markings, cleaning signs and clearing vegetation growing over and obstructing footways and accesses to public rights of way, or obstructing visibility at NMU crossings). - Consider further development of proposals at identified NMU treatment sites in Section 5.3 of this report. - All improvement proposals progressed by others should be designed to ensure that route consistency is maintained. - Provision of facilities for NMU’s should be considered in any proposed schemes which are being developed by others. - If the schemes outlined in the BBMMjv Project