Seen a pothole or a broken paving stone? Great, the council will want to know about that… well, usually.
Buckinghamshire County Council’s version of FixMyStreet now shows where there are pending roadworks — alerting citizens to the fact that they may not need to make a report, because it’s already in hand.
When reports are a waste of time
In general, councils appreciate FixMyStreet reports from residents: inspectors can’t be everywhere, and often they won’t be aware of a problem until it’s reported.
But there are some reports that won’t be quite so welcome.
If the council is already aware of an issue, and in fact has already scheduled a repair, then sad to say but that citizen’s report will be nothing more than a time-waster all round.
Enter Roadworks.org
Fortunately, there’s already a comprehensive service which collates and displays information on roadworks, road closures and diversions, traffic incidents and other disruptions affecting the UK road network, from a variety of sources — it’s called Roadworks.org.
Just like FixMyStreet, Roadworks.org generates map-based data, so it correlates well with FixMyStreet.
But we don’t want to clutter things up too much, so users will only be alerted to pending roadworks when they go to make a report near where maintenance is already scheduled.
At that point, they’ll see a message above the input form to tell them that their report may not be necessary:
Of course, they can still go ahead and make their report if the roadworks have no bearing on it.
Slotting in
We were able to integrate the Roadworks.org information like this because Buckinghamshire have opted for the fully-featured ‘Avenue‘ version of FixMyStreet Pro. This allows the inclusion of asset layers (we’ve talked before about plotting assets such as trees, streetlights or bins on FixMyStreet) and the Roadworks.org data works in exactly the same way: we can just slot it in.
We’re pleased with this integration: it’s going to save time for both residents and council staff in Buckinghamshire. And if you’re from another council and you would like to do the same, then please do feel free to drop us a line to talk about adopting FixMyStreet Pro.
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Header image: Jamie Street