£2.94 million investment for Durham County Council, for the A690, as part of a £38.3 million government investment to improve road safety on 17 of the country’s most high risk roads
Improvements to the A690, are expected to prevent around 26 fatal and serious injuries over 20 years
Part of the £185.8m investment to prevent over 2600 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years
Drivers in Durham will benefit from a £2.9 million boost for safety improvements on the A690, as part of the Government’s investment into 17 of the most high risk roads in England, the Department for Transport has announced today (19 March 2024).
Over a 20 year period, this £2.94 million investment for Durham County Council will see significant reductions in fatal and serious injuries, up to as much as a 24.3% reduction on the A690.
Across the country, improvements will include:
Designing new junctions and roundabouts
Improving signage and road markings
New road surfacing and landscape management
Improved pedestrian crossings and cycle lanes
The £38.3 million across England will deliver improvements on 17 roads, and comes on top of the £147.5m already invested to deliver life-saving improvements on 82 high risk roads across England. This round of funding is expected to save 385 lives over the next 20 years, as well as reduce congestion, improve journey times and lower emissions.
The Government is on the side of drivers and is delivering a wide range of improvements across all roads, through our £24bn Roads Investment Strategy, our 30-point Plan for Drivers and the biggest ever increase in funding for local road improvements thanks to £8.3bn of reallocated HS2 funding.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said:
“Britain’s roads are some of the safest in the world, but we are always looking at ways to help keep drivers and all road users safe.
“As part of the Government’s plan to improve roads across the country, we’re providing an extra £38 million so that local councils in England have the support they need to keep everyone safe, while reducing congestion and helping to grow the economy.”
According to the Road Safety Foundation, it is estimated that all tranches of the Safer Road Fund will save nearly 2600 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years.
Once the whole life costs are factored in for the schemes, the overall benefit cost ratio of the investment is estimated at 5.3, meaning for every £1 invested the societal benefit would be £5.30.
Dr Suzy Charman, Executive Director of RSF said:
“The Safer Roads Fund is a transformational initiative for road safety and for the local authorities receiving funds. It makes it possible for road safety teams across the country to proactively address risk of death and serious injury for all road users on these routes.
“Systematic changes have already had a big impact on road death and serious injury, for example seatbelts and airbags protect lives when crashes happen. In the same way we can design roads so that when crashes happen people can walk away, by clearing or protecting roadsides, putting in cross hatching to add space between vehicles, providing safer junctions like roundabouts or adding signalisation and/or turning pockets, and including facilities for walking and cycling.”
“We congratulate the Department for Transport on this lifesaving initiative and thank Ministers for their commitment to safer roads.”
Steve Gooding, Director, RAC Foundation:
“The Safer Roads Fund is the hugely welcome gift that keeps on giving, because today’s announcement means another 120 miles of safer road improvements will be delivered to the benefit of users. Such incremental improvements are key to achieving our collective aim for a safer road network as a whole.”
It also follows the actions government has already taken to improve road safety, including:
updating the Highway Code to introduce a hierarchy of road users, which places road users most at risk in the event of a collision at the top of the hierarchy
THINK! campaigns continue to target the most at risk groups, aiming to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the roads of England and Wales
Project RADAR - A systematic investigation creating new opportunities to combine and compare data across government departments, arms-length bodies, and policing
Launched the largest real world randomised controlled trial of interventions to improve safety of learners and newly qualified drivers (Driver 2020)
The 17 roads receiving funding from the Safer Roads Fund Round 3 2023/4 tranche are:
A579, Bolton Council: £1.425 million
A676, Bolton Council: £1.025 million
A432, Bristol Council: £2.275 million
A361, Devon County Council: £5.040 million
A690, Durham County Council: £2.940 million
A19, Doncaster City Council: £2.960 million
A19, North Yorkshire County Council: £2.960 million
A113, Essex County Council: £3.600 million
A6, Lancashire County Council: £4.540 million
A6, North Northamptonshire County Council: £2.200 million
A60, Nottingham City Council: £2.225 million
A6200, Nottingham City Council: £0.600 million
A420, Oxfordshire County Council: £2.225 million
A5191, Shropshire Council: £0.650 million
A2101, East Sussex County Council: £0.875 million
A583, Lancashire County Council: £1.497180 million
A41, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council: £1.265 million