Highways Agency
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| Founded | 1 April 2015 |
|---|---|
| Type | Government owned company |
| Headquarters | Bridge House, 1 Walnut Tree Close, Guildford |
| Owner | HM Government |
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Key people
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Jim O'Sullivan (Chief Executive) Colin Matthews (Chairman) |
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Employees
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3,500 (2015) |
| Website | gov |
Highways England (formerly the Highways Agency) is a government-owned company with responsibility for managing the motorways and major roads in England. It operates information services, liaises with other government agencies and provides staff to deal with incidents on the roads it manages. Founded as a government agency in 1994, it was converted into a government-owned company on 1 April 2015.
The former Highways Agency was created as an executive agency on 30 March 1994.
Following the announcement made on 27 June 2013 by Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, it became a government-owned company with the name Highways England on 1 April 2015.
The Chief Executive, Jim O'Sullivan assumed his post on 1 July 2015, replacing Graham Dalton in that role.
Highways England's operations are split into six regions that are roughly based on the regions of England. These regions are subdivided into 13 operational areas. These areas are each managed and maintained by an area team and a contractor, known respectively as the Managing Agent (MA) and the Managing Agent Contractor (MAC). In addition, there are a number of sections of road that are managed under DBFO contracts separately from the area teams.
Network Information Services (NIS), a Mouchel and Thales joint venture, operates the National Traffic Information Service on behalf of Highways England. NTIS is the information hub of England's strategic road network.
The £57 million service is based at Quinton, Birmingham and is responsible for providing accurate, historical, real-time and predictive traffic and incident information to businesses, the travelling public and Highways England's operations. It collects real-time traffic information from over 10,000 fixed sites on the motorway and all-purpose trunk road network from MIDAS and Traffic Monitoring Unit (TMU) electronic loops in the road surface and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras at the roadside. Additionally it uses anonymous floating vehicle traffic data (FVD) from vehicles to supplement the fixed traffic monitoring sites. NTIS also has access to nearly 2,000 CCTV cameras, 300 weather stations, 4,600 roadside electronic signs, 16,000 roadside electronic matrix signals and incident data from over 250 operational partners including the police and local authorities.
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Wikipedia