A new, prime time television series which follows Highways England traffic officers, engineers and road workers as they manage life of one of England’s busiest motorways in the country will air on Monday (13 January).
Brand-new series The Motorway follows teams from Highways England as they deal with fast lane collisions, medical emergencies and cope with one of the busiest weekends of the year on the M1.
Independent producers Fearless Television spent four months with traffic officer crews based on the M1 in Yorkshire and the East Midlands to deliver the Channel 5 series which focuses on how Highways England’s staff work to keep drivers on the move day and night.
Camera crews also spent time at the Highways England’s North East and East Midlands Regional Control Centres and the National Traffic Operations Centre in Birmingham – following the people who work round the clock to monitor the M1’s 800 CCTV cameras and coordinate activity on the busy motorway.
Mel Clarke, Highways England customer service director, said:
“This series is a real insight into the work our teams do 24 hours a-day seven days a week to keep our motorways moving often in quite difficult conditions. We hope that the public enjoy watching the series and seeing the varied and often unpredictable work our teams carry out up and down the country, on a day to day basis.”
We wanted The Motorway to give a real understanding of how the M1 is managed in a way that hasn’t been done before and make an engaging, entertaining, meaningful series with great characters who you want to spend time with.
“Together with the help and cooperation of the brilliant staff at Highways England we managed to achieve that ambition. The series shines a light on the complexities of managing one of Britain’s most important motorways and shows the often heroic actions of an unseen workforce whose indefatigable drive to help people keeps the M1 moving.”
On-road traffic officers patrol England’s motorways, keeping traffic flowing smoothly and helping any drivers which may need assistance.
Regional control centre officers provide real-time traffic management of the motorway network – managing and monitoring traffic conditions, using a wide range of signals for incidents, roadworks and congestion. As well as taking calls from the public and communicating with emergency and vehicle recovery services, they also make sure on road colleagues are deployed to incidents where they are needed.
The Motorway is being aired every Monday for four weeks from 13 January between 9pm and 10pm. For more information follow the hashtag #TheMotorway on social media.
Picture: Image shows Yorkshire-based traffic officers Lukas Cadman and Gareth Pearson as they attend an incident on the M1.
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