11. How can the condition of key highways assets such as footways, cycleways, structures, draining assets, street lighting and signage be better monitored, managed and maintained and how can innovation support preventative and planned maintenance of highways, including potholes?
Background
DfT’s ARI identifies 40 broad research questions that reflect areas of strategic importance to the department, where further insight and collaboration could enhance our evidence base, challenge assumptions and strengthen future decision-making. The ARI is organised around four complementary themes, and this question sits within the Improving Journeys for People theme.
Transport plays a central role in people’s everyday lives, shaping how easily, affordably and reliably they can access work, education, public services and social opportunities. Improving journeys for people means putting users at the heart of the transport system, ensuring that journeys are safe, dependable, accessible, affordable and integrated across modes. This reflects the vision set out in Better Connected, which emphasises transport that supports everyday journeys across the country.
For the purposes of these ARIs, improving journeys for people focuses on end to end travel experiences rather than individual services in isolation. Evidence suggests what matters most to users of the transport system is how journeys function as a whole, including the availability and quality of information, perceptions of reliability and safety, affordability and simplicity, and confidence to travel.
People’s journeys are shaped by factors beyond transport infrastructure alone, including housing, land use, employment, digital connectivity and public services. Understanding how these factors interact with transport provision is essential to improving real world journeys, particularly for groups who face greater barriers to travel or are more sensitive to cost, reliability and complexity.
This theme recognises that improving journeys for people requires both day to day operational improvements and longer term system change. The ARIs therefore seek research that deepens understanding of how transport systems shape people’s experiences and behaviour, and that supports more integrated, people centred decision making across different contexts.
Next steps
If you have research relevant to this topic, are planning work in this area, or would like to discuss potential collaboration, please get in touch. For our monitoring and evaluation purposes, we are also keen to hear if the ARI has informed or influenced your research.
To get in touch and report the use, please fill in the form https://submit.forms.service.gov.uk/form/264718/dft-areas-of-research-interest-ari/
Link to DfT ARI: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dft-areas-of-research-interest/areas-of-research-interest-2026
Topics
Research fields
- built environment and design
- commerce, management, tourism and services
- transportation, logistics and supply chains
- economics
- engineering
- civil engineering
- environmental engineering
- materials engineering
- mechanical engineering
- information and computing sciences
- applied computing
- data management and data science
- machine learning
Related UKRI funded projects
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Supporting Sustainable Transport Infrastructure Maintenance (Research In the Wild)
Helping to address the sustainability agenda through informed personal travel has been an area of intense research activity with many new forms of information collection and dissemination having been investigated. Much l...
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead research organisation: Lancaster University
Why might this be relevant?
The project specifically focuses on using predictive travel patterns to provide a more sustainable approach to maintaining transport infrastructure, which directly addresses the question.
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Travel Time: helping Citizens to rediscover their High Street
At heart, the objective of this project is to get people back to the High Street; we propose to deliver this objective by building an application to help citizens and High Streets rediscover each other. iGeolise has alre...
Funded by: Innovate UK
Lead research organisation: TRAVELTIME TECHNOLOGIES LTD
Why might this be relevant?
The project aims to get people back to the High Street through a travel time application, which partially addresses the question by focusing on travel time and transport modes.
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International Development in the Research Networking Scheme - Creative Methodological Innovations for Inclusive Sustainable Transport Planning (CMIIST
Poorly planned cities in developing countries create dangerous traffic environments and traffic congestion is growing in many of these rapidly growing conurbations. There is a need for plans and policies that ensure a mo...
Funded by: GCRF
Lead research organisation: University of York
Why might this be relevant?
The project focuses on inclusive sustainable transport planning in developing countries, which partially addresses the question by emphasizing sustainable urbanization and road safety.