London scheme to reduce roadworks impact gets £10m funding boost

A scheme to reduce congestion caused by roadworks in London is to receive £10m in funding, Sadiq Khan will announce.

City Hall said the money would go to the Infrastructure Coordination Service (ICS), which works with utility firms to time their operations better in a bid to avoid disruption.

It comes from a charge levied on firms that shut busy roads to carry out work.

Since the ICS's launch in 2019, City Hall said the service had saved road users an extra 1,254 days of roadworks.

The ICS is is a collaboration between City Hall, Transport for London (TfL) and utility and telecoms companies, which co-ordinates roadworks to cut delays.

There are more than 160,000 "works and interventions" on London's roads each year, a City Hall spokesperson said.

The £10m in funding will go in part towards making co-ordination work part of utility firms' regular processes.

Carl Eddleston, TfL's director of network management and resilience, said: "We want to make sure Londoners can move around the capital as safely and efficiently as possible.

"Our pioneering Lane Rental scheme, which allows us to charge utility companies and infrastructure providers a daily fee for digging up the busiest sections of London's roads at the busiest times, is supporting new technology and approaches to tackling congestion."

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