On the afternoon of Friday 4th March Open Mercia is celebrating Open Data Day 2016, with live streaming of the ODI Friday lunchtime lecture followed by an afternoon hackathon exploring how open data can help those working in environment, charities, and highways and transport. This post gives an introduction to the current challenges facing those working in the highways …
Conference organisers in the highways and transport sector are failing to embrace social networking or challenge the traditional conference model sufficently to enable transformation of local highways services The World Road Association UK congress on Network Resilience, on 4th and 5th November 2014 in Belfast will be the fourth major highways and transport industry conference I’ve …
Conference organisers missing out on huge opportunities to engage audiences Read More »
Interchangeability 2014 is a unique conference bringing together educators, transport providers and creative thinkers to find ways to reduce spend on school transport yet ensure children get to school safely, and in a frame of mind that enables them to learn effectively. The organisers have put a tremendous amount of thought into every aspect of …
Thanks to some volunteers and Open Mercia, RnR and Data Unlocked, the West Midlands now has a Data Store. Next question: what should we do with it? Having joined the West Midlands Open Data Forum in November 2013, I realise how important it is to capture and store local open data. The government’s data.gov.uk is …
Teresa Jolley shares the experience of her first ‘hack weekend’ creating an interactive map for tweeting your MP on High Speed 2 (HS2). As part of the HS2 team winning the Crowd Category award at The Times Build The News weekend in February 2014, we proved that with a nose for a story, some basic …
Three funding sources £8.5 billion was spent on Local Transport in 2010-11. The funding English local authorities receive to deliver local transport come from three primary sources (National Audit Office report: Funding for Local Transport, October 2012): Department for Transport, comprising: Money given directly to councils via block funding for Road Maintenance, Integrated Transport and Highways Maintenance …
Within Central Government in England, responsibility for ensuring the country has a good transport infrastructure lies with the Department for Transport. With an annual spend of around £12 billion, the Department for Transport ranked 11th amongst Central Government Departments in 2010-11 and 2011-12, representing just 2% of the total central government spend. See post on …
Central Government Spend on Transport in England Read More »
Thanks to some great work at the Guardian, in their datablog Government Spending by Department 2011-12: get the data it is now easy to see how nearly £700 billion of public money is spent by Central Government Departments. Here’s an interactive version of their work to explore (available also on the link above): As the Guardian …
In England, Scotland and Wales, local government is responsible for all roads that fall outside the jurisdiction of the Strategic Road Network (explained in the introductory post on Motorways and Trunk Roads). Local Road Classification Principal ‘A’ Roads – (green coloured signposts, green or red colouring in road maps and atlases) B Roads – (white …
Motorways and Trunk roads in Great Britain, often referred to together as the Strategic Road Network, are the key routes across the country that play such a vital role in keeping the country moving. Because of their strategic importance, they are managed centrally by each country through single bodies / organisations: England: Highways Agency Scotland: …