In a presentation to the IRF/Roads Australia conference in Sydney, May 2015, Craig Moran of New South Wales Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) noted that RMS had assessed the hazards around operating traffic in a roadworks environment and determined that in various instances, the risk is too high. As a result, the decision has been made to schedule road closures for specific maintenance activities, providing driver information and alerts well ahead of the event, and routing traffic as well as possible around the site.
There are unexpected benefits of this approach as maintenance staff report that they are able to focus better on their tasks when they don’t have to worry about traffic. This has resulted in improved efficiencies and cost savings.