Road Safety Programme Essay

Road Safety Programme

Irelands National Roads Authority is responsible for operating, maintaining and improving the national road network.

In carrying out it remit, it faces a number of key challenges, not least is the safety programme. Excellent progress has been made on upgrading the national road network in recent years, but much of the unimproved network remains congested, sub-standard and unsafe.

Safety is a high priority. Ireland has, in common with most European countries, made good progress in reducing fatalities and injuries. However, the reduction is not sufficient and improving safety on the national road network is a continuing priority and challenge.

The most important safety improvements come from route upgrades, where significant lengths of road are improved to appropriate standards. However, the Authority has carried out thousands of small safety interventions over the years, such as junction realignments or measures to slow traffic in urban areas. We continue our programme of road safety inspections as required by the EU Infrastructure Safety Directive, and these inspections are identifying many additional needs, especially on the Secondary Road legacy network.

Government Road Safety Strategy

A new Government Road Safety Strategy was recently launched for the years 2013 to 2020. A number of actions from the strategy will directly feed into our program over the coming years. These actions include;

• Implementation of the EU Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive on all national roads*

• Implementation of 150 national road improvement projects

• a number of research related actions

• a number of actions relating to pavement condition,

• reduction of the number of national access points...

... middle of paper ...

...to conceptual designs, approval, contract award, detailed design, stakeholder acceptance, funding, construction and operation.

We have examined many different scenarios of investment, each involving many different combinations of works , each delivering a different range of benefits and outcomes , some of which will only just about deliver on the safety strategies set out by government , and others exceeding the targets and the available levels of funding.

Irrespective of the final choice of funding scenario and the final choice of the portfolio of projects making up this investment programme, the success of the programme will come down to the adequacy of the governance, risk management and continual assessment of the benefits and outcomes as they arise, rather than conducting a post programme review when it would be patently too late to take corrective action.