A1(M) Junction 6 to Junction 8 Smart Motorway

[LeedsKing]

I'm wondering, but doubting, that all this widening is pre-emptive, because driverless cars are coming. Adding extra lanes offers only marginal improvement, since lane discipline is so bad. But when computers are driving it won't be. On 5 lane bits of the M25 there is usually a Prius in lane 4 doing 65 mph to save electricity, forcing us all to drive like Americans.

[Petrichor]

On 5 lane bits of the M25 there is usually a Prius in lane 4 doing 65 mph to save electricity, forcing us all to drive like Americans.

Just flash them and pass them on the left like I do. I cannot be doing with these people.

[LeedsKing]

That is what I do. But the combination of people who seem not to know that you may not pass on the left and the people who do being forced to do it means that we should just drop the rule, for clarity. Then adding lanes would actually reduce journey times. Apply this only to roads with 3 plus lanes.

[Berk]

Looks like the "widening" to D3ALR has the go ahead and will start in March 2020 but the costs are quite expensive at £170m for only 7 miles! Don't suppose how much more a full widening job would have cost, surely not much.

Article with scheme confirmation from Grant Shapps MPKey points with the scheme is will we have ALR running through the junctions, at J7 probably but junction 8 looks tight considering the proximity of the ECML bridge south of the junction.

Also will be interesting to see whether J4 to J1 & J8 to J9 will be in need of widening soon (before 2030), as traffic moves more freely from Welwyn to Stevenage.

J1-4 is at about 70k AADT so already in need of widening really.

HE have a set budget and could do at most half of current widening if they provided a HS every time. Earthworks, bridge replacement and land itself (especially in SE England) are not cheap. Frankly the existing level of widening is not enough to keep up with need (J1-4 is a case in point) so I wouldn't want to see it dramatically cut back for the sake of hard shoulders.

But smart motorway projects are not cheap either. In fact, they cost hundreds of millions. And most (80%??) of HE’s budget in the last 12 years has been spent on smart motorways.

If the “smart” only lasts 10-15 years at most, you have to ask whether it was good value for money now, or whether it would’ve been better spending a little bit more (getting over that aversion to land purchase too), and delivering a quality scheme that can last many decades.

After all, if you deliver a scheme with a hard shoulder today, it can be smartened (temporarily) in the future.

My biggest problem with smart schemes is that they’re not particularly cheap, or good value for money. They would represent about 75% of the cost of a full widening scheme anyway.

Must be good for box-tickers, though...

[Bryn666]

The whole point of not acquiring land is it saves about 5 years on the planning process timeline.

That then gives them 15 years to plan a proper widening if needed. Or not as is more likely, but the theory is there.

By 2035 we will be starting to feel the pinch of air quality problems and ICEs will be on the way out anyway so forever growing traffic seems to be a bad horse to back.

[Berk]

I do take the point about EV’s being the way forward. But what’s to say traffic growth won’t continue with EV’s??

Or will we as a nation be smarter about how we use the roads?? Using Uber-style fleets of vehicles, renting a seat when we need to, like on a train??

[c2R]

I do take the point about EV’s being the way forward. But what’s to say traffic growth won’t continue with EV’s??

Or will we as a nation be smarter about how we use the roads?? Using Uber-style fleets of vehicles, renting a seat when we need to, like on a train??

I think EVs (or rather autonomous vehicles) will increase the number of vehicles on the roads*. It should mean that people can hail one with an app on a phone and it'll come to them and take them where they want to go. This will make car ownership cheaper, as you'll just be paying to use the vehicle. It will also mean that many people won't need cars, and so won't have to store them on their driveways or in the street, freeing up large areas of residential land that are currently used for parking. Equally, there won't need to be as many car parks in towns, as the cars will just go to the next user. However, I think it will mean the end of many bus services.

Of course, I could be quite wrong about this, and I wouldn't give up my car, but I'm sure many people who don't currently have a car would be very interested in using it like a very cheap cab....


* edit - of course, the computer driven ones could presumably travel much faster and much closer together than human driven ones

[Berk]

I think the scenario you outlined *is* likely - but only in larger towns and cities.

Can’t see Uber venturing into country areas*, sorry. Country folks will still need to drive/own a personal (self-driving) vehicle.

Parking may however shift - to the outskirts or periphery of cities. Handy where park and ride already exists.

*At least 10 miles from the nearest train station.

[jackal]

But smart motorway projects are not cheap either. In fact, they cost hundreds of millions. And most (80%??) of HE’s budget in the last 12 years has been spent on smart motorways.

If the “smart” only lasts 10-15 years at most, you have to ask whether it was good value for money now, or whether it would’ve been better spending a little bit more (getting over that aversion to land purchase too), and delivering a quality scheme that can last many decades.

After all, if you deliver a scheme with a hard shoulder today, it can be smartened (temporarily) in the future.

My biggest problem with smart schemes is that they’re not particularly cheap, or good value for money. They would represent about 75% of the cost of a full widening scheme anyway.

Hardly. HE's position is that ALR is 60% cheaper:

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/c ... 3/6306.htm

I thought I'd look at some M25 schemes myself:

J5-7 ALR open 2014 £129m 11 miles = £11.7m per mile
J16-23 HS open 2012 £3.4bn 22 miles = £154.5m per mile
J23-27 ALR open 2015 £180m 17 miles = £10.6m per mile
J27-30 discontinuous HS open 2012 £583m 17 miles = £34m per mile

Prices taken from CBRD: http://www.roads.org.uk/road-schemes/co ... region=All

Even if you just compare the ALR schemes with J27-30, 60% cheaper looks a significant underestimate, especially considering J27-30 isn't really a 'full' scheme (the shoulder drops regularly and no land procurement was required).

J16-23 is infamous for financial mismanagement (e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-12387767). Take off a billion and it's still vastly more expensive than ALR. Indeed, as the article says, part of the mismanagement is precisely that they built full widening rather than ALR - not a mistake to be repeated.

People see an ALR scheme costing hundreds of millions and think 'widening couldn't be much more expensive', forgetting the billions frittered away on individual widening schemes.

[Herned]

M25 J16-23 was a PPP though, with 30 years of maintenance included in that cost, so not a fair comparison. It will also be able to be converted to ALR at a later date, for less cost. One day some of those other schemes will need proper widening as well, and that £154m per mile will probably look a bargain

[Bryn666]

As you've said it's the land that is the killer cost. And spending all that money to provide a dead lane seems spectacularly uneconomic.

There are some cons to smart motorways in that they are pretty final - you've squeezed the lemon dry if you install one as there's no more highway land available.

The worst smart motorway scheme though is M60 J8-18 as no capacity gains exist whatsoever apart from the conversion of J18 to a tiger tail. The rest is the same queues under shiny new lights. That really was a waste IMV.

[Robert Kilcoyne]

The worst smart motorway scheme though is M60 J8-18 as no capacity gains exist whatsoever apart from the conversion of J18 to a tiger tail. The rest is the same queues under shiny new lights. That really was a waste IMV.

I would agree. The hundreds of millions spent on the smart motorway scheme would have been better spent on a M60 (M62) relief road.

[Herned]

As you've said it's the land that is the killer cost. And spending all that money to provide a dead lane seems spectacularly uneconomic.

There are some cons to smart motorways in that they are pretty final - you've squeezed the lemon dry if you install one as there's no more highway land available.

The worst smart motorway scheme though is M60 J8-18 as no capacity gains exist whatsoever apart from the conversion of J18 to a tiger tail. The rest is the same queues under shiny new lights. That really was a waste IMV.

Yet our neighbours across the channel continue to waste their money on widening motorways with hard shoulders...

And as you say, they use up the available land, so should any further widening be necessary it's going to be a lot harder/expensive to do

[TimM3-A55]

As you've said it's the land that is the killer cost. And spending all that money to provide a dead lane seems spectacularly uneconomic.

There are some cons to smart motorways in that they are pretty final - you've squeezed the lemon dry if you install one as there's no more highway land available.

The worst smart motorway scheme though is M60 J8-18 as no capacity gains exist whatsoever apart from the conversion of J18 to a tiger tail. The rest is the same queues under shiny new lights. That really was a waste IMV.

Arguably even with regular widening you've already squeezed the lemon dry as there's still no space for more lanes through/over bridges as most regular widening doesn't include major reconstruction. The Southen M1 being one of the exceptions, I expect D5 ALR to be implemented there at some point in the near future. I think most would agree the decision not to build the new structures required for the M4 smart motorway with HS, or at least the space for them, to allow future widening is short sighted.

Another long term future issue with smart motorways is roadworks as they will require closing at least one lane for the duration of the works, currently the extra space the HS provides prevents this in most cases.

[Bryn666]

Another long term future issue with smart motorways is roadworks as they will require closing at least one lane for the duration of the works, currently the extra space the HS provides prevents this in most cases.

There will be more overnight closures and the increased costs of doing this. Maintenance becomes ever more expensive.

[jackal]

M25 J16-23 was a PPP though, with 30 years of maintenance included in that cost, so not a fair comparison. It will also be able to be converted to ALR at a later date, for less cost. One day some of those other schemes will need proper widening as well, and that £154m per mile will probably look a bargain

When adjusted for 20-30 years of construction inflation? Probably not, and especially not compared to the ALR schemes at a fraction of the cost (even including their inflation).

The point about PPP is reasonable, but even if you take a second billion off (taking us down to 40% of actual cost) it's still £63.6m per mile, five or six times more than ALR. That's the difference that land and structure replacement makes.

I'd argue that squeezing the last drop out of the existing alignment a la ALR, with any subsequent improvement offline, is far better value for money than a full online widening (which is close in cost to a new alignment) followed eventually by ALR. The false economy of full widening is precisely why we had a near-moratorium on motorway building for a couple of decades. I prefer the current approach of cheapo ALR making space in the budget for bold offline schemes like the LTC and M62 relief road.

That's the challenge for the advocate of full widening: which schemes do you want to drop to provide the extra billions? Without that detail it looks a lot like cakeism.

[Bryn666]

That said we have not been bold enough with the M6 J11a-19, which really should have been considering a four carriageway arrangement so HGVs and strategic national movements weren't stuck with junction hoppers.

As we know though the last time this was considered the costs were staggering and it died a death.

[Robert Kilcoyne]

Some interesting reading for Bryn:-

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... y-15507566

[Herned]

That said we have not been bold enough with the M6 J11a-19, which really should have been considering a four carriageway arrangement so HGVs and strategic national movements weren't stuck with junction hoppers.

As we know though the last time this was considered the costs were staggering and it died a death.

It's the one section of the key strategic motorway network without any even vaguely sensible alternative compared to say M1/M40 and M1/A1. So deserves to have money thrown at it in lieu of building an alternative route.

How does the Netherlands manage to do such enormous comparable schemes (e.g. Amsterdam-Maastricht) without bankrupting the country

[jackal]

^ Sustained investment for 50+ years. In the long run it improves public finances due to improved productivity and tax take. We had the tap dripping half the time.

I think the M6 expressway will eventually get revived, though the ALR is necessary regardless given how long it would take to get the expressway built.