All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

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Bomag
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Bomag »

Phil wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:20
rhyds wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 09:28
Piatkow wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 08:39
I agree about the hard shoulder giving a false sense of security. A friend of mine suffered life changing injuries after his car was rear ended on the HS while he had his head under the bonnet trying to fix a problem himself.
Its stories like this that have made me decide that, HS or not, if my car develops an issue (puncture etc) I'm carrying on as quickly/safely as possible to a junction, ERA or other "safer" area than the HS, even at the risk of further damage to my car. It only takes one unaware driver to wander from L1 across the line to cause, as you describe, life changing injuries.
Please note that the OFFICIAL ADVICE is to get out of your vehicle ASAP once it has stopped on the hard shoulder (via the passenger / nearside door) GET BEHIND THE CRASH BARRIER and STAY A GOOD 20M AWAY from your vehicle. This should ensure that (1) you are not going to be hit by vehicles, or indeed (2) debris from any hard shoulder collision.

You should NOT attempt ANY REPAIRS to your vehicle, however minor while it is on the hard shoulder - only professional recovery personnel should be doing that (if they believe it is safe to do so) as they will place their recover truck with (its many hazard lights) behind yours to draw attention to the situation and hopefully make passing drivers concentrate on keeping out of the HS.
That is not 'Official Advice', if you do that in some locations - as someone did on Thelwall viaduct -you end up dead. There has been many attempts by the Smart Motorway team to cover there arses, sorry cover all options, but as the safety specialist tell them 'its complicated'.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by rhyds »

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:09
rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 12:30
Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 11:49 Finally Geography doesn't come into it - a strategic important road is just that, be it 10 miles long or 100 miles wrong. Trying to say "well they are only 25miles apart so we can get away with a bog standard dual carriageway is small minded cheapskate thinking beloved of bean counters which has crippled the UKs outlook for centuries. The amount or type of traffic isn't going to suddenly change because HM Treasury decided they want to spend less will it!
Geography (and most importantly population density) certainly does come in to it, its probably the greatest limit to how much space (and how much it costs) we have to fit wider roads in.

Using this site we can see that France's population density is 119 per Km2 (309 people per mi2). The same figure for the UK is 281 per Km2 (727 people per mi2), or more than double. This can most obviously be seen when travelling by ferry on the Calais-Dover route. The port at Calais is a huge operation with 100s of acres of flat land around it and plenty of space to build roads, shipping infrastructure and everything else.

Compare that to Dover, where the port is squeezed in by the Cliffs and the town, there's clearly much less space to build infrastructure so we have to apply different standards and different solutions to France because we simply don't have the space.

The same applies to our road infrastructure, especially the core network which passes through the centre of England, which is massively densely populated. The cost of widening something like the M6/M5/M42 loop to D4HS would be massively, colossally, mind bendingly expensive and would probably absorb Highways England's toner budget for a month to print out the number of zeros involved.
Sorry, geography doesn't come into it when we are talking about the provision of hard shoulders on strategic routes like the A14!

The amount of HGV traffic on the A14 is not going to change regardless of whether Felixstowe and Daventry are 10 miles apart or the 128miles!

Whether to provide a hard shoulder (or indeed other motorway features including matrix signs + emergency telephones every mile) should not depend on distance - its a function of the types, speed and volume of traffic the route is expected to handle. The grater the later, the garter the chances of an incident happening - particularly when you start adding other sub standard features like at grade pedestrian crossings into the mix.

Yes there may be localised features which mean a brief section of no hard shoulder is required, but such instances should very much be the exception and not the norm.
I'm sorry, but you've missed the point entirely. Its not distance that's the issue, its population density. While lower population density may mean longer distances between population centres, that's not the issue at hand.

One of the knock-on effects of higher population densities is the affect on land costs. This then feeds in to the amount of land that can be acquired (and the width of road you can build) for a given road building budget.

The difference in population density will mean that land prices are going to be, in general, more expensive in a more densely populated area or country than they are than in a less densely populated one. That is there's more competition for a square kilometre of (relatively busy) Northamptonshire than there is for a square kilometre of (relatively empty) Brittany, therefore its cheaper to build a wide road in a low PD (population density) area than in a high PD one. If this wasn't the case, high PD areas like London and Birmingham would have D8HS roads by now!
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by rhyds »

Bomag wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:16
Phil wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:20
rhyds wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 09:28

Its stories like this that have made me decide that, HS or not, if my car develops an issue (puncture etc) I'm carrying on as quickly/safely as possible to a junction, ERA or other "safer" area than the HS, even at the risk of further damage to my car. It only takes one unaware driver to wander from L1 across the line to cause, as you describe, life changing injuries.
Please note that the OFFICIAL ADVICE is to get out of your vehicle ASAP once it has stopped on the hard shoulder (via the passenger / nearside door) GET BEHIND THE CRASH BARRIER and STAY A GOOD 20M AWAY from your vehicle. This should ensure that (1) you are not going to be hit by vehicles, or indeed (2) debris from any hard shoulder collision.

You should NOT attempt ANY REPAIRS to your vehicle, however minor while it is on the hard shoulder - only professional recovery personnel should be doing that (if they believe it is safe to do so) as they will place their recover truck with (its many hazard lights) behind yours to draw attention to the situation and hopefully make passing drivers concentrate on keeping out of the HS.
That is not 'Official Advice', if you do that in some locations - as someone did on Thelwall viaduct -you end up dead. There has been many attempts by the Smart Motorway team to cover there arses, sorry cover all options, but as the safety specialist tell them 'its complicated'.
Indeed. If you're claiming something is "official advice", its generally considered best practice to link to it directly rather than re-word it in large, unfriendly letters.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Phil »

rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 12:30

Except that the A14, as far as I have experienced, doesn't seem to suffer much difficulties by not having a hard shoulder, and the cost of retrofitting one would, I guess, equal the cost that adding a third lane to the Kettering bypass did, but with zero impact on traffic congestion.

As an aside, if you were given the power to "magic" a third lane on to the A14 all the way from Catthorpe to Huntingdon, which of the following options would you go for?

1) Hard Shoulder with no traffic running at all
2) Hard Shoulder with part time running
3) Full time 3rd lane
My default position is the A14 should have been built with full width hard shoulders (or had intermittent ones retrofitted to existing roads) when the Felixstowe - M1 link was being drawn up.

However as the road now exists I would want to see:-

All the remaining at grade crossings removed,
Lay-bys fitted with proper deceleration / acceleration lanes and set back from the main carriageway
Intermittent hard shoulders fitted (even the French style narrow ones would be better than 1m hardstrips in my view)
A ban on agricultural vehicles, pedestrians, horses, motorcycles under 50CC, etc (i.e. make it a de-facto motorway!)

If however the A14 was fitted with Smart motorway features including bans on anything other than class 1 and class 2 traffic (as per the Cambridge - Huntingdon section) then I would accept* that hard shoulders are not necessary. In that situation the hard shoulder space could be used as a running lane - though you should note that doing this requires the rebuilding of all bridges. Adding intermittent hard shoulders by contrast would mainly involve the construction of retaining walls and could probably be achieved within the highway boundary as per the south western section of the M25.

Note the above would also apply to the A42 and A34 as a minimum. Yes its expensive - but thats what you get when you do something on the cheap and have to come back later to fix it.

* Assuming that Highways England can get their response time between a vehicle getting stranded and the lane being closed down form the woeful 8 minute average!
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by rhyds »

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:29
rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 12:30

Except that the A14, as far as I have experienced, doesn't seem to suffer much difficulties by not having a hard shoulder, and the cost of retrofitting one would, I guess, equal the cost that adding a third lane to the Kettering bypass did, but with zero impact on traffic congestion.

As an aside, if you were given the power to "magic" a third lane on to the A14 all the way from Catthorpe to Huntingdon, which of the following options would you go for?

1) Hard Shoulder with no traffic running at all
2) Hard Shoulder with part time running
3) Full time 3rd lane
My default position is the A14 should have been built with full width hard shoulders (or had intermittent ones retrofitted to existing roads) when the Felixstowe - M1 link was being drawn up.

However as the road now exists I would want to see:-

All the remaining at grade crossings removed,
Lay-bys fitted with proper deceleration / acceleration lanes and set back from the main carriageway
Intermittent hard shoulders fitted (even the French style narrow ones would be better than 1m hardstrips in my view)
A ban on agricultural vehicles, pedestrians, horses, motorcycles under 50CC, etc (i.e. make it a de-facto motorway!)

If however the A14 was fitted with Smart motorway features including bans on anything other than class 1 and class 2 traffic (as per the Cambridge - Huntingdon section) then I would accept* that hard shoulders are not necessary. In that situation the hard shoulder space could be used as a running lane - though you should note that doing this requires the rebuilding of all bridges. Adding intermittent hard shoulders by contrast would mainly involve the construction of retaining walls and could probably be achieved within the highway boundary as per the south western section of the M25.

Note the above would also apply to the A42 and A34 as a minimum. Yes its expensive - but thats what you get when you do something on the cheap and have to come back later to fix it.

* Assuming that Highways England can get their response time between a vehicle getting stranded and the lane being closed down form the woeful 8 minute average!
A fine post, but it wasn't an answer to the question I asked! Given your answer above, I'll re-word it in a more abstract manner

Given the ability to add a hypothetical third lane to a hypothetical busy two lane, grade seperated, all-purpose dual carriageway, would you

1) Add a hard shoulder only for emergency use
2) Add a hard shoulder with part-time use and lane control
3) Add a third running lane

Please restrict your answer to one of the three options above.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Phil »

rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:24
I'm sorry, but you've missed the point entirely. Its not distance that's the issue, its population density. While lower population density may mean longer distances between population centres, that's not the issue at hand.

One of the knock-on effects of higher population densities is the affect on land costs. This then feeds in to the amount of land that can be acquired (and the width of road you can build) for a given road building budget.

The difference in population density will mean that land prices are going to be, in general, more expensive in a more densely populated area or country than they are than in a less densely populated one. That is there's more competition for a square kilometre of (relatively busy) Northamptonshire than there is for a square kilometre of (relatively empty) Brittany, therefore its cheaper to build a wide road in a low PD (population density) area than in a high PD one. If this wasn't the case, high PD areas like London and Birmingham would have D8HS roads by now!
Ahh so what you are saying is that because we are a more crowed country we should be reducing the safety standards to compensate.

Sorry thats nonsense.

When deciding the standard which to build a road - that should be done on the basis of its intended use, not simply to fit within a certain budget.

I am of course familiar with the need to put a price on a human life, and that figure has to be sensible / proportionate if we are to build anything, but that should be consistent across the entire strategic road network - which includes the A14, A42 and A34 in my book - not just the motorway network as the DfT seem to think.

One of the problems with the UK is that is has set the bar so high for motorways that if it doesn't pass that threshold the road gets built as an ordinary DC - when in reality the transition is more gradual.

Isolated DC by-passes round towns do not get used in the same way as strategic routes like the A14 does and the standards should reflect that by allowing the construction of such strategic roads to a D2(M) footprint. Back in 1990 when the A14 was being designed, it would have been obvious that the type of traffic it would carry made it a virtual extension of the motorway network - not merely a bypass of Kettering and as such popper D2M motorway standards should have been applied (even if it was opened as an all purpose road with restrictions to pacify the green lobby). This would not materially increase land costs - particularly if more use was made of retaining structures and if built in at the beginning you would also keep build costs down (no Traffic management).
Last edited by Phil on Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by DB617 »

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 11:49
rhyds wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 14:20 As for Germany, having toured in Germany a few years ago, the Autobahn standards may have been D2M, but it was not the same as the UK's standards for D2M, IIRC the HS is a fair bit narrower (It is in France) on many European highways. Also France and Germany are, geographically, very different to the UK (and England especially) having comparable populations but a considerably larger land mass.
Yes our motorway network may well be heavily trafficked and superior to other countries networks in design stakes, but by the time you add up all those miles of strategic dual carriageway like the A34, A1, etc its clear that there is a massive amount of strategic traffic being carried outside the motorway network too.

Finally Geography doesn't come into it - a strategic important road is just that, be it 10 miles long or 100 miles wrong. Trying to say "well they are only 25miles apart so we can get away with a bog standard dual carriageway is small minded cheapskate thinking beloved of bean counters which has crippled the UKs outlook for centuries. The amount or type of traffic isn't going to suddenly change because HM Treasury decided they want to spend less will it!

Don't forget we are talking about roads like the A14 here - a road that links the busiest container port in the UK to the manufacturing heart / main distribution depots for the country. As such it deserves to have the same features as motorways, i.e. hard shoulder (or Smart motorway equipment), bans on tractors, no at grade crossings etc.
One of the worst examples of this - though rather less relevant as of this year - is the state of the E30 route, relevant almost exclusively for European freight, between the Channel Ports and Fishguard. As you arrive in Dover a vast expanse of mostly English-managed motorway lies ahead of you. Things start to go badly awry on the M4 when you reach Newport, deteriorate further (but still with blue signs) at the Port Talbot/Earlswood section, then the A48/A40 route slowly descends into madness with tractors using the route's central carriageway turning points as the main connection between farm fields, and finally after Carmarthen where the dual carriageway E30 disappears and you in your 44 tonne HGV find yourself on the Pembrokeshire Council controlled single carriageway following behind twenty-two caravans. The last eighth of the journey - between Pont Abraham where the motorway dies and the ports at Fishguard, less so Pembroke - can take a quarter of the journey time and is by far the most dangerous. It seems the deterioration of the E30 as it heads west is based entirely on capacity estimates and not on the types of traffic expected on the route. I'd argue an under-capacity D2 would be hugely preferable for all modes of transport apart from agricultural vehicles and NMUs, and there has long been a call for the trunk road from Pont Abraham onwards to receive an LAR to get all the right turns closed.

The only saving grace is that any tourists trading the great variety of Europe for the idyllic seaside of Pembrokeshire can at least get within a few miles of their destination using roads with a barrier down the middle.

Is that the case in Europe? I would imagine the correct, less austere way of connecting ports is to have at least a token dual carriageway all the way, as it is by far the safest way to move freight. As a result of the missing end of the route, Fishguard in particular is barely used by heavy freight, which is a huge missed opportunity for the entire region.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Phil »

rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:43
A fine post, but it wasn't an answer to the question I asked! Given your answer above, I'll re-word it in a more abstract manner

Given the ability to add a hypothetical third lane to a hypothetical busy two lane, grade seperated, all-purpose dual carriageway, would you

1) Add a hard shoulder only for emergency use
2) Add a hard shoulder with part-time use and lane control
3) Add a third running lane

Please restrict your answer to one of the three options above.
Please don't try and put words into my mouth by forcing me to pick one of 3 options which presumably are a reflection of your views. They do not cover all the potential options (no mention of intermittent hard shoulders for example) and are I suspect designed around getting me to commit to something you can take issue with.

My personal preference to the scenario you give (and assuming you are talking about roads like the A14 / A34 / A42) is:-

Add a 3rd lane with either intermittent hard shoulders or SMART motorway equipment**.

Note - this is not intended to apply to every busy D2 AP dual carriageway - only those which are there as extensions / key links between the motorway network

Adding a 3rd lane* on its own to strategic roads like the A14 without some extra safety measures in my view is wrong - particularly as your newly widened road can carry the same amount of traffic as a D3M setup.

* Other than perhaps a short distance between adjacent junctions

** On the basis that a properly implemented Smart motorway provides no reduction in safety compared to the presence of a hard shoulder.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by rhyds »

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:46
rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:24
I'm sorry, but you've missed the point entirely. Its not distance that's the issue, its population density. While lower population density may mean longer distances between population centres, that's not the issue at hand.

One of the knock-on effects of higher population densities is the affect on land costs. This then feeds in to the amount of land that can be acquired (and the width of road you can build) for a given road building budget.

The difference in population density will mean that land prices are going to be, in general, more expensive in a more densely populated area or country than they are than in a less densely populated one. That is there's more competition for a square kilometre of (relatively busy) Northamptonshire than there is for a square kilometre of (relatively empty) Brittany, therefore its cheaper to build a wide road in a low PD (population density) area than in a high PD one. If this wasn't the case, high PD areas like London and Birmingham would have D8HS roads by now!
Ahh so what you are saying is that because we are a more crowed country we should be reducing the safety standards to compensate.

Sorry thats <swearing>
There's no need to swear, and circumventing the swear filter is against the posting guidelines. I'd suggest you edit that post before someone reports the post. If you can't, please contact the SMT to do it for you.

What I'm saying is that as our population density is higher land costs are also higher, and there is less physical space to work with than there is in the examples you've chosen to use from northern France.
Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:46 When deciding the standard which to build a road - that should be done on the basis of its intended use, not simply to fit within a certain budget.

I am of course familiar with the need to put a price on a human life, and that figure has to be sensible / proportionate if we are to build anything, but that should be consistent across the entire strategic road network - which includes the A14, A42 and A34 in my book - not just the motorway network as the DfT seem to think.
Unfortunately, road building budgets are far from infinite. When the A14, A42 and A34 were upgraded (IIRC the early to mid 1990s) the Government of the day (John Major's Conservative administration) decided that the road budget needed tightening. Later in the decade, the Government of that day (Tony Blair's Labour administration) decided it needed tightening even more than that (something about bailing out Railtrack...) There were also issues around protests at major roadbuilding projects at the time, which also increased scheme costs.
Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:46 One of the problems with the UK is that is has set the bar so high for motorways that if it doesn't pass that threshold the road gets built as an ordinary DC - when in reality the transition is more gradual.
"Motorway" is a legal term, not an engineering one. Can you clarify what engineering differences you're outlining?

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:46 Isolated DC by-passes round towns do not get used in the same way as strategic routes like the A14 does and the standards should reflect that by allowing the construction of such strategic roads to a D2(M) footprint. Back in 1990 when the A14 was being designed, it would have been obvious that the type of traffic it would carry made it a virtual extension of the motorway network - not merely a bypass of Kettering and as such popper motorway standards. This would not materially increase land costs - particularly if more use was made of retaining structures and if built in at the beginning you would also keep build costs down (no Traffic management).
This is true, however this is 2020, not 1990, and there's no point in saying that we should be starting from a different place.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by rhyds »

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:02
rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:43
A fine post, but it wasn't an answer to the question I asked! Given your answer above, I'll re-word it in a more abstract manner

Given the ability to add a hypothetical third lane to a hypothetical busy two lane, grade seperated, all-purpose dual carriageway, would you

1) Add a hard shoulder only for emergency use
2) Add a hard shoulder with part-time use and lane control
3) Add a third running lane

Please restrict your answer to one of the three options above.
Please don't try and put words into my mouth by forcing me to pick one of 3 options which presumably are a reflection of your views.
I'm not trying to do anything of the sort! I'm trying to condense your verbose and rather wide-ranging posts in to what, in an abstract world devoid of budgetary restrictions, you would do to upgrade a busy, grade seperated D2 with no hard shoulder.

That is, would you send the imaginary diggers in to add the extra capacity of a third lane or the extra safety of a hard shoulder?
Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:02 They do not cover all the potential options (no mention of intermittent hard shoulders for example) and are I suspect designed around getting me to commit to something you can take issue with.

My personal preference to the scenario you give (and assuming you are talking about roads like the A14 / A34 / A42) is:-

Add a 3rd lane with either intermittent hard shoulders or SMART motorway equipment**.
Unfortunately the above isn't an answer. Its two half-answers, only one of which was an option in the question. That is adding a third lane with lane control. Which, effectively, is what HE are doing with all-lane running. Even if we consider both of your options, how are ERAs different to an intermittent hard shoulder? Its all down to how you interpret "intermittent", and as my crystal ball is low on diesel I can't exactly read your mind to work out what you mean. What do you mean by an "intermittent" hard shoulder in an engineering sense?

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:02 Note - this is not intended to apply to every busy D2 AP dual carriageway - only those which are there as extensions / key links between the motorway network
The second question was regarding a hypothetical "busy D2", and you yourself have pointed out that its traffic levels that matter, not geographical location!
Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:02 Adding a 3rd lane* on its own to strategic roads like the A14 without some extra safety measures in my view is wrong - particularly as your newly widened road can carry the same amount of traffic as a D3M setup.
Have you any data to back that assertion up?
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Phil »

rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:09

"Motorway" is a legal term, not an engineering one. Can you clarify what engineering differences you're outlining?
What I mean is that following certain key blunders (like building the initial bit of the M5 as D2 rather than D3) the mindset (pre Smart motorways) in the DfT (and its predecessors) seems to be "we can't build motorways unless they are D3 / D4 with full hard shoulders".

In reality having intermittent hard shoulders can provide most of the benefits a continuous one does - so if costs are an issue why not build larger structures to D2 - but keep the road between the D2H?

Take matrix signals or emergency phones - again the mindset is 'we cannot have them if its not a motorway' - so if land take is perceived as costing too much to build it as D3M we don't don't get them.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by rhyds »

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:35
rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:09

"Motorway" is a legal term, not an engineering one. Can you clarify what engineering differences you're outlining?
What I mean is that following certain key blunders (like building the initial bit of the M5 as D2 rather than D3) the mindset (pre Smart motorways) in the DfT (and its predecessors) seems to be "we can't build motorways unless they are D3 / D4 with full hard shoulders".

In reality having intermittent hard shoulders can provide most of the benefits a continuous one does - so if costs are an issue why not build larger structures to D2 - but keep the road between the D2H?

Take matrix signals or emergency phones - again the mindset is 'we cannot have them if its not a motorway' - so if land take is perceived as costing too much to build it as D3M we don't don't get them.
I see lots of text but no actual answer to my question unless I use many, many assumptions. Until you're able to answer a direct question with a direct answer there's no point even attempting to debate.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Phil »

rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:30
Unfortunately the above isn't an answer. Its two half-answers, only one of which was an option in the question.
Exactly - you deliberately structured the answers to make it impossible to reply in any other way than to reinforce your own views.

Adding a 3rd lane to the likes of say the A52 between Nottingham & Derby or a 3rd lane is different to adding a 3rd lane to the A14 past Huntingdon. The former is not part of the strategic national road network (though it is of course very important in a regional / local context) while the latter forms one of the key arteries across the UK and is no different from the M1, M5 or M6 functionally.

The national strategic road network is there to facilitate long distance travel - not local commuting. As such it is reasonable to expect traffic on it to be travelling long distances - and the further you travel the grater the chance an incident will occur. Similarly and delay or disruption on the strategic road network will have effects which can ripple throughout the country, not just the local area, so it deserves proportionally more attention in design to mitigate them.

I stand by my assertion that the strategic national road network should be built to (if not actually signed as) what we think of as 'motorway standards'. Namely bans on everything other than class 1&2 traffic, fully grade separated with proper acceleration / deceleration lanes (no 'give way' style turnings - including exists from lay-bys), matrix signage every mile, emergency phones and intermittent hard shoulders (or mega long ERAs if you prefer to think of them that way).
rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:30
Even if we consider both of your options, how are ERAs different to an intermittent hard shoulder? Its all down to how you interpret "intermittent", and as my crystal ball is low on diesel I can't exactly read your mind to work out what you mean. What do you mean by an "intermittent" hard shoulder in an engineering sense?
As in what has been fitted to the M25 between junc 7 and 23 via Heathrow!

Hard shoulder inserted where possible - no hard shoulder where structures get in the way. they are better than ERAs simply because they are longer - thus there is more chance of a vehicle being able to make it onto the hard shoulder and come to a stand in a safe manor than an ERA which may be up to 2 miles away and requires the vehicle to enter it at slow speed due to the lack of any deceleration space!
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

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Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:57 As in what has been fitted to the M25 between junc 7 and 23 via Heathrow!

Hard shoulder inserted where possible - no hard shoulder where structures get in the way. they are better than ERAs simply because they are longer - thus there is more chance of a vehicle being able to make it onto the hard shoulder and come to a stand in a safe manor than an ERA which may be up to 2 miles away and requires the vehicle to enter it at slow speed due to the lack of any deceleration space!
As I said upthread, without a crystal ball it wasn't clear if you meant what you've explained above or, to give another intermittent hard shoulder example,this type of hard shoulder on the M50
Built for comfort, not speed.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Phil »

rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:36

I see lots of text but no actual answer to my question unless I use many, many assumptions. Until you're able to answer a direct question with a direct answer there's no point even attempting to debate.
OK so what about the fact that variable speed limits and mandatory message signs are currently not enforceable outside of motorways and the fact that the new Huntingdon by-pass has had to open with them in an advisory only capacity.

No I cannot quote exact design standards which detail - but I don't need to, HE themselves have said the above themselves in various statements over the past 6 months.

I think the A14 would benefit from this technology (but at time of writing) it would be illegal to install it precisely because the A14 is not legally a motorway!
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Phil »

rhyds wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 15:07
Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 14:57 As in what has been fitted to the M25 between junc 7 and 23 via Heathrow!

Hard shoulder inserted where possible - no hard shoulder where structures get in the way. they are better than ERAs simply because they are longer - thus there is more chance of a vehicle being able to make it onto the hard shoulder and come to a stand in a safe manor than an ERA which may be up to 2 miles away and requires the vehicle to enter it at slow speed due to the lack of any deceleration space!
As I said upthread, without a crystal ball it wasn't clear if you meant what you've explained above or, to give another intermittent hard shoulder example,this type of hard shoulder on the M50
Thats a very good example of the sort of thing I would propose for the A14 Hard shoulder (or extended ERAs if you want to think of them like that)

Being a motorway means no pedestrians, tractors, etc or at grade turns, etc

Advisory matrix signals and emergency phones present every mile.

No dodgy lay-bys, the only thing is some of the junctions are a bit substandard - but even with that consideration in mind you don't have any right turns across the central reserve.
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

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Phil wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2020 23:53 ... not to mention 24hr continuous CCTV coverage ...
But here is the nub of things... empirical evidence suggests that this is not the case!
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

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Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 15:17 OK so what about the fact that variable speed limits and mandatory message signs are currently not enforceable outside of motorways and the fact that the new Huntingdon by-pass has had to open with them in an advisory only capacity.
Then surely the logical way forwards is to amend the legislation to allow those features to be used on non-motorway roads?
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

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Stevie D wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 09:32 Having a hard shoulder is generally safer than not having one
  • Having somewhere to safely stop is safer than not having somewhere safer to stop.
  • A continuous hard-shoulder has been proven to be unsafe (the statistics on hard-shoulder fatalities are out there).
  • Discontinuous lay-bys (as long as they are adequately spaced) are safe
Vehicles do not routinely stop dead with no prior indication... you would expect a warning light, or a strange noise or whatever.

It is a pity that statistics on causes of vehicle breakdown are not available...
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Re: All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

Post by Micro The Maniac »

Phil wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 13:09 Sorry, geography doesn't come into it when we are talking about the provision of hard shoulders on strategic routes like the A14!
You overlook the NIMBY effect... how often have (even minor) road upgrade proposals been met with "we don't want a motorway here"

In France, Spain and in fact much of Europe, the population density means you can drive the motorway anywhere you want with only token resistance. The same applies to high-speed rail lines.
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