Traffic levels and travel patterns will alter significantly over the coming weeks and months due to the impact of the social distancing strategy being employed in response to the Coronavirus. 

As a result, several Local Highway Authorities have already confirmed that they will not accept new traffic surveys conducted after Friday 13th March 2020, until further notice. We fully anticipate that all local highway authorities will adopt this stance. 

We appreciate that this current situation may raise questions for our clients, particularly around whether work on Transport Assessments and other transport planning projects should be paused if it is not possible to collect new traffic data.  

However, in most cases we expect to be able to provide a ‘business as usual’ service, given that there is already a substantial amount of readily available traffic survey data in the public domain.  For example: 

• Local Highway Authorities hold traffic count data of many junctions and roads across their networks which can be purchased; 

• The Planning Portal contains an abundance of data from other planning applications which can be used and adjusted to represent current conditions; and 
• Many Local Highway Authorities operate strategic traffic models which can be interrogated to provide traffic flow data. 

For some projects it may be necessary to validate the above sources with local traffic counts when network conditions return to normal, but utilising existing data sources will allow your projects to remain on track. 

If you have any concerns about how Coronavirus may affect your project, then please do contact one of our team and we will be happy to discuss any queries directly.