Counting traffic to help with A38 junction changes

by Lucy Care on 24 February, 2015

An example of the tubes across a road which count vehicles.

An example of the tubes across a road which count vehicles.

Have you spotted one of these ‘loops’ on the road recently?  There are hundreds about!

Over the last few weeks there have been exhibitions about how the A38 might be altered to remove the islands at Ashbourne Road (A52) and Little Eaton (A61).  If you’ve not responded to this, then the consultation details are here.

Work started on these plans back in 2008, and some of the design work will have been done back then.  The whole scheme had been scheduled for completion around 2014, but then the recession hit and plans changed.  How has traffic changed since then?   What impact would changes to the A38 have on local roads?  These are difficult questions to answer without more information.

The Highways Agency is now gathering some of that information.  150 automatic traffic count points have been set up across Derby, on both main roads and side roads, to count the numbers of vehicles travelling along these roads over the next couple of weeks and at what times.  They can also make a good guess at the types of vehicle – car, HGV, bus, etc..

All this information will be fed into a traffic model of the area.  By altering aspects of the model they can predict what might happen.  For example, the model could predict the impact of extra traffic from an expanded Heatherton or how flows might change if a new Park and Ride were to be started.

There will also be a few ‘Manual Traffic Counts’ done at important junctions recording which ways vehicles turn.  Hopefully all this will result in a road network which works for everyone, though I’m not sure this modelling includes pedestrians and cyclists yet…

 

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