Region
South West
Moving away from text-based orders to map-based orders will help make things much more straightforward for our team. Through AppyWay’s map-based, cloud-hosted suite we will more easily be able to amend or change those orders to make improvements to the schemes. Excited is perhaps too strong a word to use sometimes but from a professional or traffic regulation order point of view, the Traffic Order Suite is something that we can really see will work well for us.
Mike Potter
Road Safety Team Leader, Dorset Council
Overview
Dorset Council adopted AppyWay’s traffic suite to stay on top of the continuously evolving demands of a county whose needs vary vastly in each town, village and parish. By making traffic orders fast, open and efficient, they have increased their capacity to deliver change authority wide.
About Dorset Council
Dorset Council tackles a wide range of traffic order issues. The county, famous for its sandy beaches and Jurassic Coast, is made up of a mix of larger towns, such as Weymouth, and small villages and parishes. Each with their own traffic order needs and requirements, and often experiencing huge influxes of tourists during the summer months.
Challenge
The varied town and population sizes poses a unique challenge for the Dorset traffic order team who do not benefit from the creation of blanket traffic orders that are often used in large urban areas. Their previous software solution was a legacy platform built for traffic order management in 1997.
Outcomes
Solution
Dorset Council decided to transform their approach to traffic order management and looked toward innovative solutions for the challenges they were facing today. To create and amend traffic orders Dorset uses Mapper. Mapper is next generation traffic order software that manages both static and moving traffic orders, and has been designed to make traffic order management faster, better, and more efficient. Through Engagement, Dorset can consult with residents on an interactive platform that encourages honest discourse on traffic order changes. To visual complex traffic order data, Dorset has been using Streets, the real-time local authority wide map of active on-street restrictions.
Results
- Significant time savings in creating and amending TROs
- Improved collaboration with internal and external partners
- A richer, more streamlined public consultation process
- Business continuity and a seamless transition into remote working
Benefits
Finding flexibility and time savings with Mapper
The flexibility the suite offers, in particular the traffic order editor and manager, Mapper, has enabled the council to realise significant time savings. As a county council, time saved processing traffic orders frees up the traffic order team to help consult with the Community Highways team in the numerous towns, villages, and parishes on their TRO needs.
Consulting, planning and collaborating are crucial to the county as each area has different requirements and traffic order changes can have knock on issues that affect neighbouring villages. As the expert advisors, additional time available to consult reduces the instances of issues being displaced elsewhere and ensures the schemes that are being built will benefit not just that village or parish, but also Dorset as a whole.
Sample of the Mapper user interface for Dorset Council (illustrative data only)
”One of the main benefits of the suite is the flexibility and ease of restriction creation that the solution provides. The ability to process more than one at a time will free up our time to do more in terms of processing TRO’s. Our previous legacy system was cumbersome to use and simple data requests would often consume a significant amount of our time. The AppyWay Traffic Order Suite is already paying dividends for us as it will release more of our time to process TROs.
Michael PotterRoad Safety Team Leader, Dorset Council
Collaborating and innovating across teams with Streets
Collaboration is key for Dorset and Mapper’s ability to allow teams to collaborate has been one that Dorset County Council realised early on through the suite’s read-only function, Streets. Streets has assisted Community Highways teams across the county to visualise complex orders currently on street and where schemes may need amending or creating.
Streets also enables Dorset Council to improve collaboration with external partners, such as the Dorset Police. Usually enforcement and freedom of information requests take time to process and deliver. Streets provides enforcement teams and the police with a self-service system, reducing Dorset’s time spent processing such requests.
Sample of the Streets user interface for Dorset Council (illustrative data only)
”We’re able to collaborate better going forwards with our partners outside of the authority. One of the big benefits we will have and our colleagues at Dorset police will have, is access to read-only versions of the map-based orders. Just as a member of the public will be able to view orders in public consultation, the police can go in and access a copy of that order and it’s all present and correct for them to pick up and run with. It will be able to help them with any of their FOI process or claims against a ticket if that TRO is questioned. I can really see the benefit in collaborating through the suite via the Streets function.
Michael PotterRoad Safety Team Leader, Dorset Council
Streamlined, interactive public consultation with Engagement
Dorset Council has traditionally used local papers to consult with the public on schemes, often needing multiple, costly adverts to cover the different proposed orders. Whilst the use of print media will remain, as is currently a requirement by law, the process offered by Engagement is streamlined, much easier for the public to understand, and provides the option to use an online, completely interactive map of order changes.
Through Engagement, Dorset can consult with residents on a platform that encourages honest public consultation discourse, that captures and collates feedback in a standardised format to make reporting easier and accurate. One of the key features to enable interactive engagement is the ability for the council to respond directly to public feedback through the platform, saving them a considerable amount of time and money.
Sample of the Engagement user interface for Dorset Council (illustrative data only)
”The suite makes it much more straightforward to put together a group of orders. We can put together a package of orders, so we would only need to put one or two adverts in the press rather than the way we may have traditionally done it by putting an ad in per request as they come in. We’ll also be able to easily display that information online, and it will be much easier for us to explain the extent of restrictions, and for people to engage with the consultation. I can very much see potential for the cost saving.
Michael PotterRoad Safety Team Leader, Dorset Council
Overcoming unforeseen challenges
COVID-19
With innovation and user-experience at the heart of AppyWay’s end-to-end traffic order suite, Dorset’s traffic order team did not miss a beat when Covid-19 impacted their ability to remain in the office. The cloud-hosted platform does not require additional sign-in processes, or VPN access. Mapper can be accessed whenever and where ever, providing Dorset Council with business continuity when they needed it the most.
Continual improvement
Through feedback sessions and working closely with customers like Dorset, the software is continuously improved and updated to meet local authority needs.
COVID-19
With innovation and user-experience at the heart of AppyWay’s end-to-end traffic order suite, Dorset’s traffic order team did not miss a beat when Covid-19 impacted their ability to remain in the office. The cloud-hosted platform does not require additional sign-in processes, or VPN access. Mapper can be accessed whenever and where ever, providing Dorset Council with business continuity when they needed it the most.
Continual improvement
Through feedback sessions and working closely with customers like Dorset, the software is continuously improved and updated to meet local authority needs.
”One of the big things about Mapper is that it’s web hosted, so with us working from home due to the pandemic, using Mapper has meant we haven’t skipped a beat. We can keep talking and working just as we were. We have kept in touch with the development team at AppyWay, onboarding was seamless and we’ve had training through Zoom, which whilst that came with challenges as training over Zoom would, the team are making the best of the situation and we feel confident that we will continue to be supported by the team at AppyWay.
Michael PotterRoad Safety Team Leader, Dorset Council
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