Our team returned from Traffex in Coventry this May with a clear sense of where the sector is heading. This year's event was built around a simple premise: the time for strategic debate is over, and what matters now is practical delivery. The conversations on our stand confirmed it.
Over two days at the CBS Arena, we spoke with highway authority officers, asset managers, network coordinators and more. The questions they brought to our stand were sharper than even a year ago. How do we prove our spending delivers value? And how do we connect what we know about our assets with what the public actually experiences on the road?
Digital transformation in highways is now an operational expectation, and the gap between authorities embracing that reality and those still relying on fragmented systems is widening.
Here are the three shifts that stood out.
Public outcomes have moved into the spotlight
Perhaps the most significant shift was how often delegates framed highways management in terms of outcomes for residents, not just asset condition scores.
Public satisfaction with highway condition continues to fall. The NHT Public Satisfaction Survey 2025 shows the condition of highways score (KBI 23) dropping from 36 to 27, with highway maintenance satisfaction (KBI 24) falling from 49 to 43. Meanwhile, authorities filled over 1.9 million potholes last year, yet public perception keeps declining.
That disconnect tells you something important. Maintaining assets is not enough. Authorities need to demonstrate that decisions are evidence-led, communicate what they are doing and why, and show measurable improvement. Through CausewayOne, authorities can connect the data that drives maintenance decisions with the tools that communicate those decisions to the public, closing the gap between operational activity and public confidence.
Simon Morgan, Principal Consultant at Causeway, joined Mark Smith from the Energy Saving Trust to bring this to life. Their discussion explored how better signage, digital information and clearer public messaging can close the gap between EV charging infrastructure roll-out and driver understanding. The takeaway applies well beyond electric vehicles: infrastructure investment only delivers its full value when the people using it can actually understand it.
The cost of disconnected data is getting harder to ignore
The scale of the challenge makes this urgent. The ALARM Survey 2026 puts the carriageway repair backlog at £18.62 billion. The average resurfacing cycle has stretched to 97 years. Nearly half of all local roads have less than 15 years of structural life remaining.
When budgets are this constrained, the ability to connect condition data, inspection records, planned works and public reports into one operational picture is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between fixing the right roads first and spending money where the evidence does not support it. That connected view — bringing network, asset and operational data together in one place — is exactly what CausewayOne is built to provide.
Nick Smee, Senior Vice President of Highways at Causeway, explored exactly this alongside Jonathan Munslow from the UKRLG Adaptation, Biodiversity & Climate Resilience Board: how authorities can use the data they already hold to prioritise investment, defend decisions to scrutiny panels and deliver outcomes the travelling public can feel.
As Nick puts it: "It comes back to a simple principle: fix the right roads first. When you connect your condition data, your inspection records and your planned works into one picture, you can prioritise the schemes that deliver the greatest return."
"Northumberland proved that. They used connected data to show scrutiny panels exactly what was happening, and that evidence helped them unlock £3.5 million in new investment. When you make better decisions with the data you already have, the public feels the difference."
Authorities are pressing ahead with digital traffic orders
Despite continued uncertainty around when the D-TRO mandate is coming, digital traffic orders were a recurring topic across the event. What was striking was not urgency driven by a looming deadline, but something more considered. Many authorities are choosing to move forward with digital traffic order readiness on their own terms, recognising the long-term operational benefits regardless of when the formal requirement lands.
The appetite at Traffex was for practical guidance alongside technology: understanding the process, the data requirements and the change management involved. We're the only provider that brings together traffic order management consultancy, CausewayOne ParkMap and CausewayOne Network under one roof, covering every stage from feasibility and training through to implementation. That end-to-end approach is why authorities were drawn to the practical support as much as the platform.
What we heard on the stand
When we introduced CausewayOne at our Future Highways Summit in January, the response from authorities was immediate and practical. Traffex was a continuation of that conversation, and the questions on our stand reflected a sector that is thinking seriously about how connected platforms fit real workflows and budget cycles.
Causeway solutions support approximately 85% of UK local highway authorities. That reach meant conversations at Traffex were grounded in shared operational experience, not hypotheticals. Visitors wanted to understand how CausewayOne fits real workflows and real budget cycles, from network management and asset intelligence to kerbside data and traffic order services on one connected platform.
What we took away from Coventry
Two days at Traffex confirmed that the conversation has evolved. Authorities are no longer asking whether digital transformation matters. They're asking how to make it work within the budgets, teams and timelines they actually have.
The bar for digital maturity in highways is rising, and the authorities best placed for what comes next will be those that have already connected their network, asset and operational data on a single platform and can prove it is making a difference. That's the work we're focused on with CausewayOne, and it's why we're already looking forward to Traffex 2027.
If the challenges discussed this year are ones your organisation is working through, our team would welcome the chance to talk. Get in touch.
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