Estimating the Benefits of Joint Occupation for Street Works

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Abstract

The UK’s local road infrastructure is subject to frequent openings to maintain and invest in buried utility and cable infrastructure. Opening a road reduces its structural integrity, necessitates the implementation of traffic management and causes environmental pollution. These in turn can result in increased road use costs, adversely affect local business, cause social and political dis-benefit, reduce road asset value and necessitate unplanned maintenance.
There are therefore benefits to be gained from co-ordinating the openings of the highway in similar locations. Shared highway openings however are often not realised in practice for a number of reasons, including a lack of public accountability amongst infrastructure providers and an absence of appreciation and means to quantify the benefits of joint occupation.
To address this, this paper describes a novel procedure, based on multi-criteria analysis, developed for Staffordshire County Council which evaluates the primary monetised and non-monetised economic, social, political and environmental benefits and costs associated with joint-occupation and enables potential joint occupation schemes to be ranked. The use of the procedure is demonstrated via two joint occupation schemes in a rural and urban area of Staffordshire.
The work highlights the advantages of encouraging collaborative working amongst service providers to reduce costs and to increase asset life.
Original languageEnglish
JournalInfrastructure Asset Management
Early online date29 Sept 2017
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 29 Sept 2017

Keywords

  • Maintenance & inspection
  • Social impact
  • Infrastructure planning

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