Contact: Tim Cheesebrough, ext 7114 email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 This report outlines progress on the Hampshire County Council and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Safety Camera Partnership casualty reduction programmes for 2004/05 and 2005/06.

2. Casualty Reduction (Engineering) Programme

2.1 In the 2004/05 financial year the County Council budgeted a sum of £3.2 million of the Local Transport Plan integrated transport settlement towards casualty reduction highway engineering measures. This was the largest sum budgeted by the County Council for this programme to date and will be closely matched by a sum of £3 million for the 2005/06 financial year.

2.2 The £1.2 million allocated for the 2004/05 low cost/high yield casualty reduction engineering programme has resulted in the implementation of 87 schemes to date. Remaining schemes are to be implemented by the end of March 2005. Full details of these schemes in the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council area are provided in Appendix 1.

2.3 In addition to the low cost/high yield sub-programme, the proposed programme is again enabling the allocation of £250,000 for the provision of measures to treat sites identified through the County Council's Casualty Reduction Partnership investigations with Hampshire Constabulary. As reported to previous Panel meetings, such investigations (which commenced in 2003) are directed towards locations where there have recently been high severity injury collisions. The treatments proposed are broadly similar to the well-established low-cost engineering programme and typically include measures such as improved signing, carriageway markings and carriageway surface retexturing or resurfacing. Some 62 investigations were undertaken in 2004/05, leading to the programmed installation of some 25 schemes. The available funding will enable such investigations and the programming of resultant measures to continue throughout 2005/06.

2.4 Of the proposed 2005/06 programme, some £1 million is being made available to support the long established low cost/high yield casualty reduction engineering programme, which remains the core of the County Council's engineering-led casualty reduction programmes. The proposed programme is expected to target some 71 locations throughout the county with a higher than expected rate of casualties and/or with a predominant pattern of personal injury crashes thought likely to be improved by engineering remedial measures. Table 1 of Appendix 2 shows the list of schemes featuring in that programme for the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council area, together with the current implementation/study position for each scheme.

2.5 In addition, the continued enhanced casualty reduction engineering programme funding is enabling increased programme support of £1,380,000 in 2005/06 for casualty history-led surface treatment works to be undertaken across the county on roads and routes with a higher than expected occurrence of loss of control incidents. The schemes proposed for the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council area are shown in Table 2 of Appendix 2.

2.6 A further allocation within the 2005/06 programme will enable the County Council to continue to audit the continued effectiveness of previously installed casualty reduction engineering schemes, where there is the potential to achieve further casualty savings or where there has been a recent increase in casualty occurrence. Some £200,000 is being made available to support this work. The remainder of the £3 million programme will enable more significant safety works to be implemented at two locations with stubborn crash histories - Water Lane, Totton (New Forest District) and Tukes Avenue, Gosport.

3. Casualty Reduction Progress

3.1 It is the County Council's continued intention to contribute to the Government's headline national casualty reduction targets to the year 2010 through the Hampshire Road Safety Strategy contained in the Hampshire Local Transport Plan (2001-06). The headline targets, currently under review for the Second Hampshire Local Transport Plan (2006-11), are as follows:

(i) a 40% reduction in all killed and serious injury accidents from the average baseline level for the years 1994-98. At the time of writing, provisional figures for 2004 indicate that the reduction achieved in Hampshire was ahead of target to meet the 2010 figure, with the lowest recorded fatal and serious casualty toll on Hampshire's roads (including local motorway and trunk roads) to date; and

(ii) a 50% reduction in fatal and serious child casualties over the same period. Again, at the time of writing, for 2004 the provisional figures for Hampshire indicated similar results to 2003, where Hampshire had recorded a 40% reduction in the most serious child casualties. The 2003 figures were substantially better than previous years' results and, if matched in final 2004 results, would indicate the County Council is making good progress towards the national target for 2010.

3.2 Additionally, through its locally negotiated Public Service Agreement, the County Council committed itself to achieving a more demanding local reduction, in all fatal and serious casualties on Hampshire's roads, of some 26% by the end of 2004 from the 1994-98 baseline position. Monthly tracking of killed and serious casualties for the majority of 2004 indicated that both fatal and serious casualties showed marked reductions from the equivalent 2003 levels and looked to be on target to meet or exceed the agreed reduction. There is optimism therefore that this very challenging target may have been met.

4. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Safety Camera Partnership

4.1 Copies of the Partnership's Annual Review for 2003/04, published in December 2004, will be distributed at the meeting. The Review highlights the marked casualty reductions effected on safety camera routes and sites in the operational year 2003/04 across the Safety Camera Partnership area. (This includes the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton, the Isle of Wight and the local trunk road network.) On average, the number of fatal and serious collisions has decreased by 59% against benchmark levels prior to camera presence, representing a huge saving in both financial costs and personal loss to the communities of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. All injury accidents have also reduced by 35% against pre-enforcement levels. This enforcement presence on high casualty routes and sites over this period has contributed substantially to local highway authorities' casualty reduction performance results. For the Hampshire County Council operational area it has clearly made a marked contribution to the authority being currently on target to meet its year 2010 casualty reduction targets.

Recommendation

That this report be noted.

250/TLC

APPENDIX 1

LOW COST CASUALTY REDUCTION PROGRAMME 2004/05

Basingstoke

APPENDIX 2

Basingstoke

Table 1

Low Cost Casualty Reduction Programme 2005/06

Table 2

Carriageway Surface Treatment Programme 2005/06