Home > Associated groups > Strategic Environmental Assessment > Environmental Report > 3 Environmental and Planning Context > 3.4 Environmental Baseline
3.4.11 Material Assets
One way that the transport sector can help to improve the efficiency of the use of raw materialsis by using recycled and secondary aggregates in road and footpath building andmaintenance operations. Levels of recycling of highways materials across theseven local authorities were not available at the time that the EnvironmentalReport was written.
The Condition ofroads and footpaths can also be included within the material assets topic, andthese are monitored as part of the LTP1 process. Indicators monitor thepercentage of road where structural maintenance should be considered at threedifferent levels; principal roads, non-principal roads and unclassified roads.Trends show that of the three only the indicator for non-principal roads is ontrack to meet target.
Up until 2003/4 the roadcondition was measured by the UK Pavement Management System Coarse VisualInspection (CVIs) [11] .The DfT now regards this method of monitoring as not being sufficiently robustor consistent for the purposes of monitoring national road condition, and ithas therefore introduced mandatory machine based surveys from 2004/05. Thesesurveys have a similar specification to that developed for the Highways Agencyroad network which uses the Traffic-speed Condition Surveys (TRACS) method.
The figures produced by theTRACS type method are not directly comparable with those produced by theoriginal visual method, and therefore the figures for 2004/05 will act as a thenew baseline for the condition of principle roads. Targets have yet to be setfor this updated indicator.
The condition of footways is monitored at a localauthority level using indicator ‘BV187-Proportion of footway in poorcondition’, and for this particular indicator the average across the WMMA is23.3%, compared to an English Metropolitan Authority average of 26.1%. Trendsacross the area between 2002/3 and 2003/4 were generally poor, with six of theseven authorities showing increases in the levels of footpath in poor repair, Coventry having seen aslight improvement.
A new requirement isfor each of the seven highways authorities to produce a Transport AssetManagement Plan (TAMP). This involves the identification, registering andvaluation of the transport assets controlled by the authority. The TAMPs havethe potential for dealing with sustainability issues as they will not only beidentifying and monitoring the condition of roads and footpaths, they will alsobe looking at elements such as the landscape, heritage and biodiversity assets.