Resilient road network
The resilient route network (RRN) is the minimum road network that we strive to keep continuously open, as far as is practicably possible, in severe weather to protect essential economic activity and provide access to key services. It maintains connection between emergency services, schools, and transport infrastructure, such as main bus and train stations.
It ensures continuity of travel across neighbouring boundaries by providing access to the strategic road network. It is designed to 'Keep Cheshire West and Chester moving and open for business'.
As a general statement the initial RRN will be our pre-salting routes and any known issues from our flood risk assessments that would lead to disruption.
Resilience
Resilience is achieved through a combination of activities or components. The Cabinet Office’s guidance on natural hazards and infrastructure, ‘Keeping the Country Running’, describes the following four components:
- resistance – preventing damage e.g. a flood wall or embankment
- reliability – designing processes to operate under a range of conditions
- redundancy – availability of alternatives or spare capacity
- recovery – enabling a fast response to and recovery from disruptive events
To protect a core network we will take a risk based approach employing all the above components either in isolation or as a package to improve or maintain the resilience of key routes. Strategies and operational priorities to ensure that the RRN is effective and operational include the following:
- highway maintenance programme – including drainage policies
- identification and signing of diversion routes (including motorway emergency diversion routes)
- winter maintenance (pre-salting and snow clearing)
- flood management actions
- co-ordination with emergency planning colleagues and other emergency services
- in and out of hours response to operational events
- communication plan
Event review
Following each major event a review meeting will be held to assess the effectiveness of the adaptation and mitigation measures employed.
Asset management policy, strategy and objectives
The highways asset management strategy (PDF, 2.31MB) sets out the broad objectives and the strategic direction that we will adopt in support of the policies and supporting principles set out in our Highway Asset Management Policy.
It sets out how we will apply and operate our asset management principles to ensure that our highway network remains safe, serviceable and sustainable for the benefit of our stakeholders, taking a lifecycle planning approach to maintenance and account of available resources.