The team tasked with keeping Warrington's motorways moving

Traffic officers in the north west deal with an average of 400 incidents every day, including helping police to manage serious accidents, retrieving debris from carriageways and removing broken down or damaged vehicles.

These incidents are dealt with by more than 390 traffic officers across the region, with 70 officers supporting Cheshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester who work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

To learn more about what they do, Warrington Guardian reporter Nathan Okell went behind the scenes to spend a day with traffic officers from Highways England North West.

THE NERVE CENTRE >

The day began with a visit to the Rob Lane operations centre in Newton-le-Willows, which is the nerve centre for the north west’s motorway network surrounding Warrington.

The control centre

Operated by Highways England, the team is tasked with operating, improving and repairing the motorway network through control centre staff and traffic officers out on patrol.

As well as having a live feed to hundreds of traffic cameras across the region, staff have the responsibility to program variable message signs above the motorway, answer emergency telephone calls and dispatch officers to incidents.

Although Highways England has no enforcement powers, the operations centre is also home to staff from North West Motorway Police, and the two organisations are in constant co-operation.

After an accident, traffic officers make the area safe for emergency services to arrive by managing the flow of traffic and keep the public updated via regular posts on social media.

“When we hear of an incident, the radio team inform patrolling traffic officers who then arrive at the scene,” said traffic operations manager Jackie Ivory.

“In the control centre, we then set the electronic overhead signs and signals to control traffic while the traffic officers make the scene sterile for emergency services.

“When repair work needs to be carried out, we try to do this overnight to minimise disruption, but in some cases this must be completed straight away.”

Highways England is also being tasked with delivering 100 miles of smart motorways in the north west as part of a £15 billion, five-year strategy by the Government.

“Smart motorways provide an extra lane and a lot more technology which should reduce congestion and manage the traffic better,” Jackie continued.

“The idea is that there will be less stop-start driving with the extra lane and traffic management measures, and this will improve the quality of journeys.

“We do listen to drivers’ concerns about long-term improvement works, which is why we always try to upgrade one section at a time.”

Ash Hender, another traffic operations manager based in Newton, also revealed how ‘queue caution’ messages on British motorways are set automatically by sensors which monitor the traffic flow.

This information is then shared with organisations such as Google Maps, which makes its traffic map view very accurate.

•  OUT ON THE ROAD >

After a tour of the centre, we then hit the road with Matt and Rob, two traffic officers tasked with keeping motorists moving on the north west’s motorways.

An experienced duo, both said they had seen everything on local highways including a wide range of animal disruption.

“We’ve seen all sorts of strange things over the years with ducks, sheep and deer on the carriageway,” they said.

“Recently we’ve seen a toy taxi on the hard shoulder and a flock of escaped chickens after the lorry transporting them overturned.

“We received calls for weeks afterwards about stray chickens trying to cross the road.”

While out on patrol, the car radio was constantly reporting incidents for the nearest officers to attend, showing the endless nature of the job and dangerous nature of Britain’s motorways.

These included vehicle breakdowns, a pillow in the middle of the carriageway and even a bed on the side of the M602.

Shortly after leaving the control centre however, the team was dispatched to an incident involving a car which had been struck by an object on Thelwall Viaduct.

On arrival, the team discovered a family standing outside of the car which had a shattered front windscreen.

The car had been travelling in the fast lane before being hit by a small wheel, causing shards of glass to litter the interior.

The driver had done extremely well to remain calm and reach the hard shoulder, according to the highways officers.

Matt and Rob drove the vehicle and the family to the nearby Lymm service station just off the M6 and remained with them as they arranged for recovery services to assist them.

It is fair to say that Highways England get a lot of criticism from frustrated drivers, but spending a day among officers showed what a difficult job they have.

The increasing number of cars using the motorway network means they always have their hands full, and on the whole, the team does a great job to keep motorists moving in our region.