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Our research priorities

Our sets the strategic direction of our and ensures that we get value for money from our research investment.

We鈥檝e identified 8 research priorities that will be used as strategic themes for our research:

• managing the use of network capacity: how to more actively manage road capacity, maintain and improve performance levels against a backdrop of rising demand
• health and safety: how to meet increasing expectations that road user and workforce safety is more actively managed while there are fewer possibilities for further physical safety improvements
• managing ageing infrastructure: how to maintain an ageing infrastructure more cost-effectively with a greater focus on whole life costs
• minimising environmental impact: increasing requirements to limit environmental impacts and make sustainable use of resources
• information and data: increasing demand for and accessibility to better real-time traffic and travel information and greater use of mobile services
• technologies: increasing pace of change in vehicle technology and increasing connectivity and integration of vehicles with infrastructure
• delivery: how to safely and efficiently deliver the huge step in roads investment without comprising value for money
• meeting changing customer expectations

Our research publications

Highways England publishes research and analysis publications, searchable by keyword.

Post-opening project evaluation (POPE)

Following the opening of a road scheme, we undertake an evaluation to see whether it has had the benefits and impact predicted. Evaluation focuses on issues relevant to the individual scheme and published key objectives.

This process allows lessons to be learnt about the effectiveness of the appraisal processes and leads to better decision making.

When planning to construct a scheme, the set Department for Transport webTAG objectives must be taken into account, so these are also considered during evaluation.

The evaluation is undertaken on Highways England鈥檚 major schemes and local network management schemes (LNMS). These are categorised according to how much they cost to implement:

• major schemes cost over 拢10 million to implement
• large LNMS cost between 拢1 million and 拢10 million to implement
• small LNMS cost between 拢25,000 and 拢1 million to implement

POPE of major schemes

We produce:

• a 鈥�1 year after鈥� and 鈥�5 year after鈥� report for each scheme - some impacts such as environmental impact and accident trends can take some time to become apparent
• an independent 鈥榤eta report鈥� is published at 2 year intervals, taking an overview of all the evaluations to date
• a scheme evaluation table that shows the appraisal (predicted impact before construction) and evaluation (recalculated impact after opening) figures for all open schemes. This sets out figures for carbon emissions, traffic levels and accidents

POPE of local network management schemes

We produce:

• large LNMS Reports, which contain the detailed results for each large LNMS
• a map of evaluated large LNMS schemes
• mini-reports for each small LNMS
• an annual evaluation report, which contains the results of a meta-analysis of all scheme evaluations carried out so far, highlighting any interesting or emerging trends

Older reports are available on the . New reports are published as part of our research and analysis publications.