North Yorkshire’s new congestion-cutting Traffic Officers took to the roads for the first time yesterday to begin a round-the-clock patrol of the A1, A1(M) and the A66(M).

Wearing high visibility yellow and orange uniforms and working from black and yellow 4x4s, Traffic Officers will work to cut congestion in the region by quickly dealing with incidents to get traffic moving again. Traffic Officers will patrol the network as well as being dispatched to incidents by the Regional Control Centre, based in Wakefield.

£7.8million has been invested in the service in Yorkshire, Humberside and the North East and cutting congestion will be a year on year target.

Dealing with an average of 150 incidents per day, the service is already a huge success in the rest of Yorkshire and Humberside. Drivers in North Yorkshire can now look forward to the same level of service and increased reliability of journey times.

The Traffic Officer Service is part of a Government initiative to help cut congestion and to free up Police time to deal with criminality. Traffic Officers will take over 76% of Police duties on the network in North Yorkshire, including attending non-injury road traffic collisions, removing dangerous debris from the carriageway, answering emergency roadside telephones (ERTs) and setting signs to give drivers better information on their journey.

Acting Network Operations Manager for the Highways Agency, Pam Allen, said:

“This is great news for drivers travelling in North Yorkshire who will be able to call upon the services of the highly-trained Traffic Officers. Our Traffic Officers in neighbouring areas have dealt with everything from assisting the Police in major incidents to catching animals on the network.

“Our aim is to get drivers to their destination as safely and reliably as possible and I have every confidence that our North Yorkshire Traffic Officers will help to achieve this.”

North Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable David Collins said:

"I am delighted to welcome this partnership with the Highways Agency Traffic Officers; this marks an important step forward in the way we manage our motorways.

"The Traffic Officers will be a major boon both to the force and to drivers. They will allow North Yorkshire Police officers more time to concentrate on our core priorities - casualty reduction and tackling crime. We will still maintain control of incidents where there has been a serious injury or where a criminal investigation is needed. Highways Agency Traffic Officers will work with my officers, taking traffic management duties off their hands and helping the motorists held up by an accident to get moving as quickly and as safely as possible."

Traffic Officers have powers to stop and direct traffic under the Traffic Management Act 2004 and it is an offence not to comply with their directions.

Means less work for you Dick

Yep, just travelled down the A1 and A!M from Durham via North Yorks and saw HATO's dealing with two incidents. I was wondering when they were due to roll out up here.

Thats priority call's area isnt it?

The area I work isn't covered by HATO's

But when it is

I won't hold my breath