It’s the same data that appears on www.TrafficEngland.com.
I made some tweaks to the ClosureMonitor last week, and it seems to be producing more reliable closures now. I’d be interested to hear about any fresh feedback you or other users may have.
Tim/Ian, just to let you know as the new A556 opens up on Monday the segment IDs for the closures will needs updating (if that’s the way it works). According to the facebook page, the new road will be closed nightly next week.
https://www.facebook.com/a556knutsfordtobowdon/posts/1433137780318873
The AA traffic map shows the A5 Cannock closed but does not show on HA map… I believe it is a trunk road
It is a trunk road and is maintained by Highways England. I can’t comment on what the AA map says, particularly as it currently shows no closures on the A5.
Bear in mind that HE is the agency directly responsible for maintaining, closing and opening it’s roads. As such, if HE reports a closure, this is information directly from the source and can be considered reliable. And, since HE provide an accurate, machine-readable data feed of closures, it’s easy to implement the closures. HE will report when the road is due to close, when it actually closes, when it’s due to re-open and when it actually re-opens. For example, the A14 E/W exit slips at J47 were reported closed due to a vehicle on fire at 18:45 today. At 19:01 and 19:17, the closures were updated as still being in effect. At 19:18, the closures were reported as ended. All of this was processed by the Closure Monitor without human intervention.
Where do the AA get their information from? I don’t know, but I can make some pretty good guesses. I have no doubt that at least one person is on duty at all times checking the HA feed, unless they have implemented something like Closure Monitor. They may have access to some other data feeds that we, as normal members of the public don’t have. They may be checking local radio reports (who may themselves be getting the information from elsewhere). In all of these cases, the AA is a secondary source of the information and any process that involves human intervention may be subject to human error.
The only direct source of information I can think the AA might have is direct reports from their own patrols - a bit like closure reports from Waze users, except I expect they have the benefit of the patrol ringing up & speaking to a real person and passing on the information much more clearly. 
I’m not saying we don’t refer to the AA maps. For that matter, someone was recently complaining that the BBC had stopped providing traffic maps on their website and these were often a source of useful information. But secondary sources like this generally only get used to find more information (like why a road is closed or for how long).
We have to strike a balance. If we, as volunteer editors, did nothing, very few roads would ever be closed and users would face inconvenience. If we closed every road we heard any report about, users would be routed around non-closed roads and would face inconvenience.
With the HE feed, we have found a source of reliable, machine-readable data that is pretty good about being correct (especially since we discovered that some closures have a “probable” flag and discounted them). I have no doubt that CM misses some closures and closes some roads that aren’t closed. But in the majority of cases it’s correct and we are providing the best service possible.
We would love to find other, similar & reliable feeds that we can use for Closure Monitor. But without primary sources, we can’t afford to go around automatically closing roads. So for anything outside HE’s control, we still rely on reports - through the app or here on the forum.
A5
Earlier Accident - A5, Cannock
http://glossop.online/trafficincident/?id=10428707
I have had previous dealings with the Highways Agency. Where do they get their data? Half their cameras dont work.
They’re in charge of the roads! There isn’t a scheduled closure that is done without their authorisation.
I would imagine that the police/fire services can immediately close the road in the event of an emergency, but I expect there is also a strictly enforced process in place by which they immediately inform HE - certainly the HE feed includes plenty of “accident” events, so they do apparently normally get informed. Perhaps there was a slip-up in their communications this time?
I believe the HA data comes from three main sources
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Their own database of planned works. Given the high priority nature of the roads they’re maintaining, these works are usually planned out in quite meticulous detail, and so if they say they’re going to close a section of road for a given period of time, they usually mean it.
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Their traffic flow sensors.
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Ad-hoc reports sent in by HA staff out on the road network, or generated from within the control centres by monitoring the camera feeds.
Unless you’ve got access to the uncensored camera feeds, I’m not sure where you get the idea that many of their cameras don’t work. The public feeds they provide may be down due to server issues, but this wouldn’t affect the HA’s own feeds from those same cameras, and if there’s been an accident then it’s standard procedure for them to deliberately shut off the public feeds from any cameras being used to monitor the affected section of road. Based on my own experiences of using the public feeds for the SE England region over the last decade, I’d say the majority of their cameras appear to be working at any given moment.
Is the HA data we get completely reliable? No, of course not. From time to time stuff happens that causes their plans to go awry and roads end up not being closed when they’ve said they would be, or closures get extended due to overrunning works without the closure data being updated accordingly. And from time to time they either won’t be aware of a closure, or won’t have updated their data feed with the details of the closure.
But compared to the situation we were in before Tim’s closure monitor came online, where NO pre-planned closures existed in Waze unless one of us had gone to the trouble of researching the details and adding the data manually, and only if we were aware of the upcoming closure in the first place, and where realtime closures due to accidents etc were even less reliably shown in Waze, what we have now is a significant step forwards. Will drivers still occasionally be directed to drive along sections of HA-controlled road which are closed in reality? Of course - as I just said, the HA data isn’t perfect. Does this diminish the value to the end user of the closure monitor system as it currently stands? Not in the slightest.
Last Thursday night, we had a record 136 planned overnight closures on HE’s network, with 85% of them closed automatically without having to wait for a human to point at the right segments.
On the previous Thursday, during the day when Storm Doris was battering the country, the Monitor was taking care of over 10 unplanned closures for 3 major bridges and a few other incidents - almost entirely managed automatically.
:ugeek:
I thought I would make a list of Motorways not covered by Highways England, as these will not be automatically closed by the ClosureMonitor. Their associated local authority will be responsible:
M62 - J4 - J6 - Liverpool and Knowsley Councils
M65 - J10 - J14 - Lancashire County Council
M275 - Portsmouth City Council
A167(M) Newcastle Central Motorway - Newcastle upon Tyne Council
A329(M) - Bracknell to Reading - Wokingham Borough Council
A38(M) - Aston Expressway - Birmingham Council
A57(M)/A635(M) - Mancunian Way - Transport for Greater Manchester
A58(M)/A64(M) - Leeds Inner Ring Road - Leeds City Council
A601(M) Carnforth Spur - Lancashire County Council
If I’ve missed any, let me know.
Hi Tim, can you check on the closuremonitor for this UR?
HE said M6 (N) between J22-J23 was closed until 5am, looks like they opened slightly early.
I know one of the works managers on the M3 roadworks, he said the opening times are drop-dead times. they get bollocked by HE if it’s opened late, so they often open a little early.
This segment of the M60 was showing as closed at ~9am when I drove through it this morning. Other UR are there as well. What does ClosureMonitor say?
Edit: Well, it’s closed on the Client and LiveMap, but the segment isn’t showing as closed on the editor. Now I’m confused.
It was closed until 6am, but seems to have lingered as a “ghost” closure. It’s a bug in Waze.
I’ve managed to clear it by creating a temporary closure along the same segment.
Please apologise to everyone affected.
Had a similar thing this morning I think, M6 J2 slip onto the M69 showed as closed at 7am, should’ve opened at 6am. When I went to add a comment it decided to clear it from the map.
Dare I ask if HQ are actively squashing this bug.
Silly question time. When responding to a UR that questioned a closure, that is in the past, is it possible to see a historic HE feed or is it a case of looking at ClosureMonitor logs? I have a report on a section of road that HE have night closures 8pm-6am with the report at 5:39am so I’m assuming they opened early.
If it is only CM logs, and Tim has nothing to do… would it be possible to make the CM logs viewable in some fashion so we can dazzle wazers with our knowledge.
Hi Tim
Any way of getting this sent to my forum inbox rather than my email inbox?
Not easily, no - but I’ll have a think about it…
I am just back from a month in New Zealand. Where the local editors make no effort whatsoever (so far as I can see) to input:-
- unplanned closures for major weather events, such as main roads being closed for a week or so following a cyclone.
- planned closures for roadworks on major roads, readily available from the website of their equivalent of the Highways Agency.
- long-term road closures for the construction of an underground railway line in their largest city (Auckland).
On the plus side, I did find some fairly new roads which were correctly mapped on Waze, so there is definitely some good work going on there.
But I found the lack of closure-recording to be a nuisance, and think Waze is much better in England (*), despite the odd incorrect closure.
(*) England rather than the whole UK because Closure Monitor’s HA feed only covers England
Have we got problems with the system, I am coming across UR Permalink
Is there anyway for us to check if a road was set as closed by closure monitor?
Not at present no. Several people have asked for it, but I’ve not gotten around to it yet.
The monitor usually picks up any URs raised during a closure, but it looks like I missed this one.