Liverpool City Council is planning to use AI and photography to identify which roads to improve in the upcoming financial year.
The Highways Investment Programme will be debated at a cabinet meeting this Friday at the Liverpool Town Hall.
If approved, £34.6m will be spent on improving the city’s roads which are in need of it the most.
According to the council’s Highways and Transportation team, the programme will make use of artificial intelligence and photography to identify the roads that are in the worst condition in Liverpool.
This move has been partly prompted by last year’s criticism of the council’s Highways, Regeneration and Property Management operations by government inspector Max Caller.
Dan Barrington, Cabinet Member for the Environment and Climate Change said: “The Best Value report last year highlighted that investment in our roads needed to be smarter to ensure the right areas were being prioritised and that the contracts delivered the right results.
“We’ve made great strides by adopting AI systems and digital photography to evidence base our new priority system and I’d like to thank Highways and Transportation team for embracing this new way of working,” he added.
According to the Highways Investment Programme, Liverpool will be divided into three zones: North, central and south.
Roads will be graded between zero and five, with five being the worst condition.
The programme will fund two types of schemes: simple and complex.
Simple schemes will require small maintenance interventions whereas complex schemes will be subject to additional interventions and will cost more than £1m.
The programme sets out 108 total schemes to be implemented throughout the year, six of which are complex.
