Thursday 25 Oct 2012
WILL NETWORK RAIL’S WORK AFFECT YOUR STREET? NEW DATA RELEASE WILL SHOW YOU
- Region & Route:
- National
Network Rail is making more of its data available to the public with the release of current and future road works information on an interactive website roadworks.org, provided by ELGIN, a company established to open up local road works data.
Now residents and businesses in England and Wales will be able to search a map in the user-friendly Google Maps format which will tell them whether any planned work by Network Rail will affect the roads in their area. They can also sign up for email alerts as new work is planned. Network Rail joins other utilities such as water and electricity companies who provide this data to roadworks.org. Network Rail is the first utility in England and Wales to feed road works data directly to Elgin thus allowing complete, national coverage regardless of road or works type.
Mark Farrow, Network Rail’s head of transparency, said: “Every day Network Rail is doing work to maintain and improve Britain’s rail network. Sometimes this work can cause road disruption. With the release of this information to roadworks.org residents and businesses will have early warning of how our plans could affect their plans.
“The information will also be valuable to those who work in traffic management and other utility companies, so everybody is better able to co-ordinate potentially disruptive road works.”
Shane O’Neill, chairman of ELGIN added: “Our mission is to open up data from organisations delivering a public service – whether public or private sector – and deliver that data in a way that is useful to people. Adding Network Rail to our interactive maps will further inform and empower the public.”
The release of this information is the latest milestone in Network Rail’s programme of progressively releasing more information and data to the public. This includes train running data feeds and information about level crossings: www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency.
Notes to editors
About ELGIN
ELGIN is the trading name of Roadworks Information Limited, a new company established in 2011 to take over the stewardship of roadworks.org (formerly www.elgin.gov.uk).
ELGIN has been established specifically to realise the government’s vision of opening up local road works data by December 2012.
ELGIN is dedicated to preserving the free-to-view national road works portal and extending its range of open data services throughout the intelligent transport and software communities. www.elgin.org.uk
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About Network Rail
We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
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