News analysis Smart stop
No further all lane running motorways will be built – and campaigners now want existing ones to be removed. Sean Keywood reports.
he UK Government’s smart motorway building programme has been scrapped, in a decision attributed to a lack of public confidence in the roads and cost pressures. Planned schemes including 11 already paused, and three earmarked for 2025-2030, have been removed from government road-building plans. The government had previously announced last year that the rollout of all lane running motorways – which see hard shoulders replaced with an extra lane of traffic, and lanes opened and closed via overhead displays – would be paused to allow more safety data to be collected. The government has also said it and National Highways are continuing with plans to spend £900million on further improving existing smart motorways – although motoring organisations have argued that these measures, including adding 150 extra emergency refuge areas and improving the systems used for detecting vehicles stopped in live lanes, do not go far enough.
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Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: “Today’s announcement means no new smart motorways will be built, recognising the lack of public confidence felt by drivers and the cost pressures due to inflation.”
AA president Edmund King, whose organisation has long campaigned against smart motorways, said: “For a decade I’ve been banging on the doors of a dozen transport secretaries and ministers telling them about the deadly dangers of ‘smart’ motorways. Asking them if they would rather breakdown on a motorway with a chance of getting onto a hard shoulder or on a motorway where they would have to pray they would be spotted in a live lane, pray that the control centre will activate a warning, pray that a Red X comes up and pray that other drivers will not ignore it. “I have told them that 37% of breakdowns on ‘smart’ motorways happen in live lanes and that drivers are then ‘sitting ducks’ in a deadly game of Russian Roulette.
“I have waited a long time for politicians
to listen and at last let’s hope that this decision marks the end of the deadly ‘smart’ motorways.”
Regarding what should happen to existing smart motorways, King said: “I think there is a relatively simple solution. Reinstate the hard should with a permanent Red X and new lane markings. “Keep the emergency areas and overhead technology. Get the police to instigate a hard-hitting lane discipline campaign to get rid of the middle-lane hogs and free up road space.
“Currently ‘smart’ motorways are not really alleviating congestion as more than one-third of drivers don’t use the inside lane as they are petrified there may be broken down vehicles ahead.
“Any incident on ‘smart’ motorways causes severe congestion by closing lanes and delaying the emergency services getting through to crashes which again puts lives at risk.”
RAC spokesman Simon Williams said: “While we’re pleased the government reached the same conclusion that many
drivers already have by cancelling future smart motorway schemes which would have seen around dozens more miles of hard shoulder disappearing forever, as things stand, by the end of this year there will still be 250 miles of motorway in England without hard shoulders – that’s around 13% of the complete network. “Installing additional refuge areas and radar technology to help spot stricken vehicles is welcome and necessary, but for most drivers this doesn’t go far enough. Many felt they were dangerous from the outset and now it’s clear the government has totally lost faith in these types of road as well.
“Today, it remains the case that anyone unlucky enough to break down who can’t get to an emergency refuge area remains incredibly vulnerable where the hard shoulder has been taken out.
“We continue to believe that reinstating the hard shoulder on all stretches of road where they’ve been converted into a permanent fourth lane is the right thing to do.”
16 | May 2023 |
www.businesscar.co.uk
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