The industry’s biggest players reveal how they are reducing emissions.
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By Tom Austin-Morgan
As the UK intensifies efforts to tackle climate change, the highways and transportation sector has taken significant strides; here we look at some of the most influential companies and their views and actions on net zero projects.
Infrastructure consultancy Colas has implemented digital solutions for mobility which are helping towards decarbonisation. One is ANAIS, a digital tool that was launched in June on 3,760km of motorways and trunk roads around Birmingham, which promotes optimised preventative road asset management and is the first time it has been deployed outside of France.
Paul Elliott, National Highways' Head of Service Delivery for the Midlands, says: "We are always keen to find new ways to improve safety on our roads. Using this new source of data to support our current processes could improve our ability to target areas in need of maintenance, making journeys safer and smoother. As part of our Digital Roads project, we are embracing new ideas and technologies, and we look forward to seeing the results of this trial as well as the benefits it could bring."
However, Mark Saunders, Client Director at Colas, mentions: “There is a bit of 'wait and see' with what the new government will do with regards to funding for local authorities.”
He adds that, in general terms, there are two areas for local authorities to manage: the 'place' side and the 'people' side. The place areas are having to constantly do more with less and increase efficiencies. The people areas dominate and attract the funds as there is more public demand for social, education and health matters, which are more relatable and understood by the public as opposed to decarbonising transportation and the network.
Image: Mark Saunders, Client Director, Colas; credit: Mark Saunders.
Construction group Morgan Sindall has been working with Manchester University trialling a new mixture for concrete utilising graphene, which will increase the strength of the concrete and reduce the levels of cement required, cutting the amount of carbon used in the production process.
Richard Calvert, Design Manager at Morgan Sindall enthuses: “The sector needs to keep up with the new technology that can help with decarbonisation.” He also alludes to allowing permission to fail, if it means lessons were learned and more innovation could be adopted: “If clients' standards were more flexible, it would allow for targets to be reached,” he says. “Carbon estimating should also be included at the costing and programming stage of a scheme. Ideally the short terms on funding should be changed to allow for whole life carbon approach and take long-term planning out and away from political systems and decision making.”
Arcadis, a global design and consultancy organisation, believes mobility as a service (MaaS) has the potential to help create behavioural change in the way we use transport, when and how we travel, and reduce our reliance on owning a car.
MaaS provides access to public transport, shared mobility, ridesharing services and micromobility in a single app or platform, making it possible to plan, reserve, book and pay for a journey using all these forms of mobility. Arcadis is contributing to flagship MaaS implementations in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and the West Midlands, building on its work supporting MaaS in Amsterdam.
Simon Swan, Global Solutions Director, New Mobility at Arcadis, explains: “Decarbonisation and electrification of vehicles isn’t enough. We need to promote decongestion in our cities, across infrastructure and systems. Mobility hubs are designed to encourage citizens to move away from personal ownership and towards shared mobility services.
“We need to rethink our infrastructure to support schemes like this and adopt new technology that makes it easily available to all citizens. This also means looking at innovative ways we could connect electric vehicles to grids over time to match demand. Citizen participation is key.”
Explore CIHT’s partnership network, which plays a critical role in transport’s route to net zero.
Image: Mark Saunders, Client Director, Colas; credit: Mark Saunders.
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