Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) of major schemes

National Highways undertakes reviews on major road schemes to measure impact against forecast.

Our POPEs provide an opportunity to determine how effective we are in delivering improvements against our portfolio of major projects in the road investment programme. We compare the impact in key areas, including journey reliability, safety and on the environment.

The evaluation provides an early mechanism to ensure the project is on track to deliver the anticipated benefits over the lifecycle of a project, which is typically 60 years after opening. We assess impacts by observing trends on the route before the project was constructed (baseline), and evaluating these after the improvements have been completed and the route is fully operational to traffic.

We also assess the impacts of the project against the expected impacts presented in the forecasts made during the project planning process.

For more details of the evaluation methods, please refer to the POPE methodology manual.

Can’t find the evaluation you need?

Older POPE reports can be found on the Highways England pages of the gov.uk website.