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A System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) applied to Motorways.

31/10/2017

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Everything’s connected

I read an article recently discussing the merits of 50 mph speed restrictions within road works, as opposed to 60 mph, arguing that drivers on average would be less stressed in the higher speeds, so may be safer, and that got me thinking.

The Highways Agency are responsible for motorways and major highways in the UK, to be run economically, safely and to promote the well-being of those that use and maintain those roads.
I’m a Civil Engineer by training, a Highways Manager by initial experience, and a Transformation Specialist, anchored on W E Deming’s ‘Continual Improvement’ (CI) philosophy.

CI has two core components, a SoPK and Deming’s Chain Reaction, where SoPK embraces four core requirements: an Appreciation of a System, Knowledge about Variation, a Theory of Knowledge and a Knowledge of Psychology. Deming stated that: “The various segments of a system of profound knowledge proposed here cannot be separated. Thus, knowledge of psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation.”

A highway network is incredibly complex, consisting of every combination possible from brand new / well maintained to extremely old / falling apart. From very well designed and built to very poorly designed and built.

In general; we use single status rules to run these assets, 70 mph on all dual carriageways, 60 mph on most other major highways and 50 mph where there are road works or hazards.

Are these generic concepts correct for all purposes? Why only think in tens? What’s wrong with 55 mph? If 70 mph is good for fine sunny days, is it good for icy cold nights? If the speed limit is 50 mph how many motorists comply with that with and without average speed cameras.

From a ‘Knowledge of Variation’ point of view, there will be differing statistical realities, for the same highway sections, at different times of the day, week and the year.

During commuter periods on Motorways, there tends to be far more vehicles per hour, travelling pretty fast, technically too close together, with most people being predictable about ‘road sense’. Overnight tends to have a greater ratio of HGV’s with cars travelling a little faster than average, with a few outlier very fast cars. The greatest risks coming from inattention due to tiredness.

During holidays and weekends, there will be the greatest variation of driver styles, with some occasional drivers being less predictable in their road-craft.

A Knowledge of Psychology is also interesting in these scenarios, for instance the relatively new highway laws regarding ‘lane hogging’ has produced two equally dangerous thinking patterns, the first is for people who believe their speedo is accurate, and once they are showing 70 mph they simply will not change lanes.
I’ve calibrated my speedo’s using sat nav equipment, my previous car would have a road speed of 64 mph when the speedo showed 70, where-as my current car is doing 68 when it shows 70. Too few people understand that a speedo is a guide, it’s not statistically reliable.

Then there’s the ‘lane-swervers’, driving at speeds in excess of 85 mph quite often, then moving from the outside lane, to middle to left hand lane, then back again, as they consciously comply with the ‘non-blocking’ requirements, despite being 20% above the speed limit.

Slow blockers cause a string of drivers to change lanes to get past, while reducing the capacity of the highway, while the high speed swervers are difficult to see and predict if changing lanes your-self.
To be able to drive safely, reliably, economically and environmentally soundly, requires slightly different driving styles in those different driving situations, prior to considering weather conditions.

Road designs.

The capacity of a system depends upon the sum of all the parts in a system, and how they interact at different times.
Understanding a complex system requires an appreciation of theories, modelling of options, and an appreciation of the impact of changes upon the psychology of the road users.

Take the M25 for instance: When the designs for the M25 were being completed, the transport modelling team I was working with were asked to test out the capacity to carry traffic. We modelled the proposed highways, against the existing transport network, and discovered that with no increase in overall traffic, many sections of the M25 would NOT be able to cope with demands that existed at that time.

The government refused to accept our calculations, and built the M25 as designed. The reason they wouldn’t accept our designs was because they had a flawed theory (or concept), which was the purpose of Motorways is for ‘long distance travel’ while other highways are for shorter distances.

Our predictions, showed that many vehicles would use the Motorways for relatively short runs, covering one to three junction lengths then return to more local roads. The net impact of increasing capacity would be to attract vehicles into those areas, up to taking the same net time to travel, enabling other vehicles to then utilise the slightly better options, leading to the same amount of vehicles being used a little more.

Had we been believed, many parts of the M25 would have been built as 4 lanes or more, which would have been massively cheaper than retrospectively increasing capacity, while that traffic is in flow.

The capacity of the majority of a system is greater than a few pinch points.

If you look at some local networks, such as the A43 south from Brackley, via the M40 to Bicester, onwards to the A34 towards Oxford.

The A43 and A34 are both two lane dual carriageways, the A43 has relatively few roundabouts, while the A34 has no roundabouts on the main through-way, as junctions are grade separated. These roads travel roughly North East to South West and have two lanes in each direction. They merge with the M40 which is nearer North West to South East, and is three lanes wide.

For about five miles the five lanes of traffic are merged onto three lanes of Motorway. The A roads are nearer full capacity than the motorway either side of this joint flow. However, five into three doesn’t go and that stretch of Motorway is always congested during peak hours, with a very high rate of accidents.

The A43 roundabout link to the M40 (junction 10) has been redesigned twice in recent years, to a system that had a high proportion of over-lapping right turners causing congestion two ways, to a complex design causing lost capacity south-bound. A simple approach that was grade separated would have enabled a far greater M40 access capacity, thereby attracting more traffic onto the A43 and M40.

In addition to carrying ‘five-lanes-worth’ of traffic on the M40 south from J10 (Brackley) to J9 (Bicester) on only three lanes, there’s the additional problem of the A43 roundabout over the M40. It simply hasn’t the capacity to take a very high proportion of right turn traffic.

Thus the inside lane of the M40 often tails back over two miles along the M40 towards J10, leaving at best two lanes for transport aiming onwards towards London. The queue capacity could be increased by lane widening, or the queue averted by a flyover link straight onto the A34, which has already the indignity of being near capacity.

On bad days the tail-back is much greater, leading to middle lane queuing, with only one lane available for straight through traffic towards London. On those days, the whole Motorway backs up.

The psychology of some drivers is to always seek to ‘beat the system’, so when the near side lane is backing up to get off at J9, some will stay in the middle lane until only a 100m from the junction, then slow down and merge into the slow lane. Thus running the risks of being either rear-ended in lanes one or two, or indeed running into the back of a vehicle in lane one.

Clearly a system which is not designed to optimise flow or capacity. Each part of the system is poorly designed, not considering the whole network.

There are a few junctions on the M40 where a 3 lane motorway reduces to 2 lanes between the exit slip and the entry slip roads. If 1/3rd of the traffic exits reliably at those junctions during peak-flows, then all is well. However, all too often only 10% goes off, leaving 90% of three lanes with only two lanes capacity. This is a real penny pinching stupidity, saving a little during construction, then costing millions in delays over the next 50 years!

Roadworks designs.

The M1 between J15a (Northampton) and J19 (A14 – M6) has been in a near state of permanent roadworks for the last four years. The first phase was to replace the previous Armco barriers with the now in-vogue triangular section reinforced concrete, followed by the introduction of ‘smart-motorways’ which will add another lane for most peak travel times, with overhead gantries for lane and speed management.

Hence about sixteen miles of both North and South-bound carriageways have had 50 mph restrictions, with lane widths reduced, and far more accidents and congestion than normal. So from ‘Economic, Health and Safety and Wellbeing’ (EHSW) points of view, is this optimal design, or one that feels right?

For instance, why was central reservation changed, Motorways re-opened and then Smart Motorways introduced? Would both together had been less costly from all four perspectives?  E-H-S-W.

Economically doing both at the same time would have had shared use of the highway management systems, probably taking only 66% of the time that doing them in series takes, with perhaps only 75% of the total cost to construct. Then add in the cost of delays on the economy and two separate is probably twice as dear as one combined.

Then: is three narrow lanes over 16 miles all in one go REALLY VfM, or an illusion of cheaper? Evidentially most of the system is waiting for work over that ’32 mile length’. At times there have been less than 3 people actually seen working over a 16 mile single run. Thus most of the signage and 95% of the slow narrow constraint, is of no value to the motorist at that time.

Would more radical temporary traffic management regimes work better? For instance, closing one side for 1/3rd of the length, say J16 to J18 . Have two lanes width of free-access high intensity works, with two narrow same direction flow, plus one lane of traffic contra-flowing the opposite direction.

End to end times are better, less congestion, less narrow lane driving, lower traffic management costs….

One aspect to cover is ‘a Theory of Knowledge’. Borrowing from Professor Russell Ackoff, there’s a hierarchy of Knowledge: Data, Information, Knowledge, Insight – Wisdom. I’ve utilised that to create D>I>K> Tactics.

If you have excellent ‘Knowledge’ of a system, then you can model and make predictions to underpin future state designs, not only of the final design method, but also how to achieve that.

To design the ‘future state’ of a Motorway, many, many aspects are weighed up in an Options Appraisal, starting from the current designs, land ownership, constraints etc., then the issues to overcome or the outcomes to be achieved.

Swapping the focus around to ‘Safety’, what if the purpose of the works were to transition from a peak traffic capacity of 10,500 vehicles per hour, to 13,500, with fewer accidents, and less congestion, with the works minimising risks to the workforce and travellers during work.

There’s a lot of ICT in all this: Computer Aided Design (CAD) for the construction designs and temporary works, Average Speed Cameras to control excessive drivers, Automatic Number Plate Recognition, (ANPR) to identify individual vehicles, including their legal speeds (i.e. Large Good Vehicles maximum = 56 mph normally not 70 mph), Urban Traffic Control (UTC) where traffic congestion is monitored and managed from.

All these data sources start to weave together a ‘rich picture’ of knowledge, including the abilities to automatically model current traffic demands, origin and destination demands, speeds per lane, percentages of traffic between speed X and Y, creating awareness of reality against legality.

However, what if we added some aspects together, perhaps utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the picture, to morph information together?

Consider the possibilities for both designing how features of the network will be used, and then the implications during different states of the construction.

Let’s say this was to create a ‘smart motorway’ using a split two lane – one lane contraflow.

Starting with lane awareness utilisation information, the number of ‘standard axles’ per day, year or 25 years could be calculated for each lane, demonstrating that the nearside lane needs to be far stronger than the off-side one.

Lane widths could be greater for the nearside, and narrower for the offside, reflecting vehicle types.

Transitions from lane to lane could be mapped, to give frequency activities which vary between ‘featureless lengths’ compared to those with junctions and services.

From real time traffic observations, mixed with accident and near miss information, the root causes of accidents could be modelled in differing traffic scenarios, such as peak flow, off-peak, over-night and ‘Sunday drivers’.

Risks change with use and demands.

In this way, not only could the designs have optimal costs / safety options designed in, but also fine tuned in many ways.

Then the build cycle could have differing factors of risk assessed, for that type / element of construction, at that time of week. Some temporary works will be far more effective overnight or at weekends, than at peak times, while some others are potentially cost / safety neutral.

Thus, instead of a one size fits all safety design, variable designs would be utilised at varying times of the week.
Put quite simply, a vehicle usage model, overlaying the CAD permanent and temporary works design, could be interfaced via AI to predict the least worst options for any scenario that can be thought of.

Then modelling of road-work traffic speeds could be applied, utilising known traffic characteristics, perhaps having stretches of highway with virtually no current works at 60 mph, while high intensity works could be reduced to 45 mph. Thus increasing average speeds, while reducing accidents.

During transitions, that is a change in temporary traffic management, there’s no reason why a 40 mph speed shouldn’t be applied, with say 55 mph reinstated once the risk has reduced.

Safety by design?

Considering all that ICT that is gathering data, creating information all the time, what if another function of AI were applied to vehicle movement monitoring?

We’ve all seen vehicles weaving due to either a distraction in the vehicle, or the driver nearly falling asleep, and yet there’s little we can do on Motorways other than give them a wide berth.

What if you used similar systems to Face Recognition or ‘Suspected terrorists’, that is you used the vehicle monitoring data to detect suspicious driving characteristics, the AI could probably differentiate between novice driver, sleepy driver and distracted.

If the ‘body language’ of the vehicle gives cause for concern for either their own safety or that of others, then overhead signs and road side signs, plus the transport police could be used to direct the driver off the highway at the first convenient opportunity.

The recent two lorry and one minibus catastrophe near Luton on the M1 would have probably have been avoided if this technology was in place.

Have you noticed new junction designs sometimes being set up, with more lanes and far higher capacities, with far lower congestion, being in place for a few weeks, then being altered to have less lanes, some hatched out areas, and then a return to greater congestion?

This is due to a two-stage design! 1) Design, build, normalise traffic; 2) Carry out safety audit, alter design.

I’ve seen some of these create over 800M2 of new carriageway, which then simply becomes hatched white line areas. That’s 800M2 of brand new carriageway built and paid for that will never get used.

If you integrated the CAD designs with some simple traffic flow models, then you could build what will get safely used, saving 800M2 of needless costs.

Better designs are not only safer to use and safer to build, but also sensible for the economy!

Thinking a little wider.

Traffic is often slowed around schools to 20 mph, thus a special cause required for 192 days a year, for 1½ hours a day, is put in place 24 / 7. That’s a requirement for 3.3% of the year, applied for the whole year. In Scotland, they have 20 mph ‘when the yellow lights are flashing’, the rest of the day is 30 mph or more!

Lastly, the Deming Chain Reaction: Improve quality, costs reduce…. More can be done!

Dave Gaster

October 2017
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A perfect storm? 1987 revisited.

11/10/2017

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Totally unprepared?

The great storm that hit the East Anglia Coast on the morning of Friday 16th October 1987 was not forecast nor prepared for by the Suffolk Coastal District Council, which I was ‘Assistant Director Technical Services’ at the time.
We had quite sophisticated Emergency escalation preparations across the council, in terms of both civil and military emergencies, with a constant coast watch following the 1953 floods, worries about Sizewell following Chernobyl the year before and even reports of flying saucers over the woods near our various RAF stations.
The few days before the storm hit (which was force 12 on the Beaufort  scale, but technically not a Hurricane) we had had considerable rain fall, leading to many areas of potential inland flooding, with drainage crews working all hours to pump out our many areas of low lying land.

First awareness.

At around 4:30 in the morning I was woken up by the sounds of shifting tiles on my roof and a buffeting of the house, with a discernible shaking as the wind struck. However, being well used to being woken up by my two young sons, I had no problem going back to sleep.
We woke at around 6:30 to discover the extent of the problems, with mains electricity still on most of the time, despite our very rural location.
Despite the force of the winds that were in full force, I decided to set off for work some 14 miles away. The telephone lines were down, and mobile phones were a back-breaking rarity, with battery packs weighing in at 7 kilograms.
My wife was not impressed with me deciding to leave her in the grips of the storm, but I did ask my neighbour to keep an eye out in case there was later severe damage to the house.

Getting to work!

I lived in a lovely village called Debenham; some 14 miles away from the council depot I was aiming for in Ufford, being the main operation depot for Suffolk Coastal DC.
There were many fallen trees with telephone and power lines randomly across the roads. After a while I found myself behind a farmer with a couple of chain saws, so he and his colleague cut up the trees and a few drivers from a growing convoy pulled the trees out of the way. Risk assessment was basic, did it look safe? Yes, let’s do it!
Despite the continuing gales and the amount of debris, I believe I got to work in under 90 minutes, which was incredibly fast. On arrival at the depot, I wasn’t at all surprised to discover that the whole of my workforce was at work, not one single absentee.
The flat roof had been ripped off the building maintenance office and was strewn across the yard and a neighbouring field. The more traditional roof of the stores was also very badly damaged, with several areas missing entirely.
Most people were out and working, our phone lines with the main office in Woodbridge was working, with dozens of building maintenance works orders coming through the connected IT systems.

Work Planning:

All normal work was suspended, everyone was deployed looking at properties, seeking to make them safe and secure. Generally skilled tradesmen were pairing up with others, to enable maximum capability to react to the numbers of issues faced while being able to work safely, especially with the ongoing threats from the gales to bring down more debris.
The drainage team had been hardest hit in many ways, they had already been working long anti-social hours over the prior few days, and now power was unavailable to the majority of sewage pumping stations, which if left unmanaged, would create numerous floods and tens of thousands of households without the ability to flush their loos, or even worse, the back flooding to low lying estates.
We had one mobile generator to push sewage from station to station. Anglian water couldn’t be contacted to borrow another, and no hire firms had one big enough to hire to us. We were facing a very messy problem.
With forecasts of far more wind and rain, I organised a dozen operatives to be back at the depot for noon, hoping that the infamous ‘eye in the storm’ would give us a calm time to create temporary roofs for the offices and stores.
Oddly at noon, all was calm and we rigged some tarpaulins held down by railway sleepers and sand bags, hopefully strong enough to survive a second phase of storms.
My car was nearly out of fuel, and most petrol stations were closed due to lack of power, so I was issued with council fuel, but made a point of paying in full, straight away.

Headquarters.

The main council offices in Woodbridge were quite different to the depot, less than half the staff were at work, there were no ‘emergency meetings’ of Management Team to discuss the storms. Nothing from my Corporate Director, and the council Emergency and Safety Officer was no-where to be seen.
After some discussions with a few officers about what was happening on the ground, and liaison with the Housing Client officers about tomorrow’s plans (that being a Saturday), I returned to the depot to see how things were going.

Depot return:

My first port of call was the drainage manager’s office. Tim sat in his chair, head dropping, eye’s red and sore, from far too many hours continuous work. After a quick word with his Supervisor, who was far fresher. I ordered Tim home, to get some rest and be fit for work the next day. He tried to argue, but simply didn’t have the where-with-all to fight me.
An hour or so later Tim’s wife called me, totally incredulous that Tim was home, when the area was in such a state. She was so pleased he was home.
The near 24/7 service to keep those pumping stations from flooding was partly in shape, with crews literally shifting s**t from one place to another, with 17 stations with no power.
The Building Maintenance office was still in full swing, with Christmas lights being used in the absence of the previous roof lights. Roger and Albert were in seventh heaven, they were inveterate council officers, loving the ability to add value to such a crisis.
The Stores set up ran by John was starting to take shape, with surprisingly low stock damage, as the wind damage had largely been before the rain returned. We were ruing the sale of thousands of tiles that hadn’t moved in years only a fortnight before, now we were trying to buy them back.
At around 17:00 I drove home, before it got to dark, seeing forests that had been levelled as if dozens of bombs had hit them.

Saturday morning.

Having made sure my own house was broadly OK, I pleased my wife by saying I’d only got to work for a couple of hours, just to make sure everything was OK.
As I drove in I saw dozens of badly damaged houses and forests where the outside trees still stood, while all the inside ones had sheared off half way up the trunks. (I later learned this was because of vortices  creating a hammer effect on the inner trees). Many trees also had simply fell over with their roots in the air, where the muddy ground had liquefied with too much water followed by the vibrations from the storm.
Tim was in the depot looking half way fit for work. Their biggest problem was that a single generator simply wasn’t enough to keep the system flushed.
I went into the housing maintenance office and was amazed that Roger and Albert were there, but the phones were silent, and had been all morning. So; I drove over to HQ in Woodbridge to find a full Housing Client office, with no calls coming in. No other senior officers had come in, that is not the Chief Executive, nor the Corporate Directors or any Management Team. Saturday was a day of rest!
I asked why there were no calls, and they said no one was in to look after the switchboard. They knew the normal operators, so we looked up their names in the phone book, I got through to one and explained our problem and asked her if she would come in?
She replied, “Have you the authority to bring me in?” I thought about it and said, ‘No. But I think I can get it squared on Monday.”

“OK” She replied, “I’ll be in in ten minutes, thanks for the call.”
As soon as she was in we had a deluge of calls.
On return to the depot I learned that we had borrowed another generator from a local farmer who knew Tim, and we were in full swing of making sure the s**t didn’t hit the fan.
I finally got home around 3:30 and was greeted by my next door neighbour with a self-help proposition, we could use his ladder to refix his TV Aerial, then my own, we then did around thirty more before the light was fading too much for safe working.

Weeks later:

The drainage team eventually heard from Anglian Water about three weeks after the storm. Ours was the only district across their whole area that hadn’t had floods due to power cuts, they were inquisitive ‘how did we manage that?’
The housing maintenance team were assigned whole streets of inspect, record and repair options. We made safe and repaired more properties in the month after the storm than ever before by about a factor of three.
I met with the insurance loss adjuster and got the funding to repair and replace the depot roofs within a few days of the storm, then met with the Principle Accountant to utilise some emergency repair funds, which between them allowed us to raise the roof in stores, increasing stock capacity by 60%, with Roger taking delight in designing the layout and 3D space utilisation.
I don’t recall any special Department or Council Management Team discussions re lessons learned, or why had it gone so well? But maybe my memory is jaundiced after thirty years.
That was a ‘one in two hundred year storm’ taken as ‘business as usual’ by my wonderful team.
 
Dave Gaster
October 2017
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