The future of smart motorways

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SouthWest Philip
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by SouthWest Philip »

BenMcr wrote: Sat Mar 12, 2022 08:54
Micro The Maniac wrote: Fri Mar 11, 2022 21:30 The newly opened smart M27 had a fatality this week... a passenger in a black Nissan.
  • In the immediate aftermath, it was reported that the black Nissan lost control and crashed into a white van...
  • Subsequently, it is being reported that the white van crashed into the back of the broken down black Nissan.
A new-built stretch of smart motorway won't have been opened without stopped-vehicle detection, will it?
Sounds like the one the M4 not the M27
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ch-M4.html

That section is supposed to have SVD https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-work ... -motorway/
Which ponders the question, does SVD cover the entire carriageway of just the inside lane?

And given that the accident occurred in the outside lane, would it have made any difference if there was a hard shoulder anyway?

The whole incident could have happened within a matter of seconds, from breakdown to collision.
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Chris5156
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by Chris5156 »

SouthWest Philip wrote: Sat Mar 12, 2022 09:01 The whole incident could have happened within a matter of seconds, from breakdown to collision.
Yep. There are many incidents that neither SVD nor a hard shoulder could ever prevent. On any other road they wouldn’t even make the news; we’re only seeing this one reported because there’s particular interest in Smart Motorways right now.
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KeithW
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by KeithW »

Smart Motorways have nothing to do with it, there was a similar incident on the A1(M) near Ferrybridge some years ago.

<Edited to correct location>
darkcape
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by darkcape »

Traffic management has now gone out on the M6 northbound J4a - 5, with lane 4 now the work area.
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jackal
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by jackal »

12 May 2022
National Highways delivers smart motorway safety upgrade

National Highways said it was on course to upgrade almost 100 safety cameras to enable automatic detection of vehicles that ignore red X lane closure signals by the end of September. This is designed to increase compliance with the red X, helping to ensure the safety of drivers and their passengers in difficulty, or road workers and emergency services who need a safe space to work.

It was also confirmed that it will add to the more than 330 extra signs it has already installed to inform drivers of the distance to the next place to stop in the event of a mechanical problem or emergency.  

In addition, National Highways is on track to complete the roll-out of radar-based technology that can spot a stopped or broken-down vehicle on over 200 miles of All Lane Running (ALR) motorway by the end of September 2022.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nati ... ty-upgrade
DB617
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by DB617 »

darkcape wrote: Fri Mar 18, 2022 23:32 Traffic management has now gone out on the M6 northbound J4a - 5, with lane 4 now the work area.
Cue the sound of the M6 Toll operators rubbing their hands with glee.
brummie_rob
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by brummie_rob »

DB617 wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 18:38
darkcape wrote: Fri Mar 18, 2022 23:32 Traffic management has now gone out on the M6 northbound J4a - 5, with lane 4 now the work area.
Cue the sound of the M6 Toll operators rubbing their hands with glee.
So the concrete barrier was installed before the Commonwealth and all traffic management was removed. Despite saying they would move on to J8-J10a, they are now saying 50mph and three lanes will be back from next week until next year with lighting columns being installed until October then verge works begin with drainage improvements and new refuge bays being installed. This is basically a full upgrade now for sure ahead of all lane running when that is approved.
ABB125
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by ABB125 »

brummie_rob wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 22:00
DB617 wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 18:38
darkcape wrote: Fri Mar 18, 2022 23:32 Traffic management has now gone out on the M6 northbound J4a - 5, with lane 4 now the work area.
Cue the sound of the M6 Toll operators rubbing their hands with glee.
So the concrete barrier was installed before the Commonwealth and all traffic management was removed. Despite saying they would move on to J8-J10a, they are now saying 50mph and three lanes will be back from next week until next year with lighting columns being installed until October then verge works begin with drainage improvements and new refuge bays being installed. This is basically a full upgrade now for sure ahead of all lane running when that is approved.
Hopefully they can upgrade the software which controls the variable speed limits while they're at it. I've been along the M6 between J4 and J6 several times a week for the last month in both directions, and the number of time the limit has been 40-50 for no reason then reverts to NSL just before a block of congestion is remarkable!
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by thomas417 »

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... ed-limits/

"She also pledged to ban smart motorways if she were to be elected prime minister, declaring that the “experiment hasn’t worked”."

I would presume banning smart motorways is more likely than removing the speed limit
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by Big L »

“On speed limits, we need to be prepared to look at that ... I can’t give you a precise answer.”
I’m prepared to have a good guess which half of that quote is the more accurate.
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B4444
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by B4444 »

They're busy replacing the armco barriers on the M3 J9 to J14 with concrete which would have been part of it's smartification.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by WHBM »

thomas417 wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 23:20
"She also pledged to ban smart motorways if she were to be elected prime minister, declaring that the “experiment hasn’t worked”."
One wonders why Grant Shapps never did this. It seems a cross-party point of agreement.
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IAN
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by IAN »

WHBM wrote: Thu Sep 01, 2022 08:36
thomas417 wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 23:20
"She also pledged to ban smart motorways if she were to be elected prime minister, declaring that the “experiment hasn’t worked”."
One wonders why Grant Shapps never did this. It seems a cross-party point of agreement.

I presume that she means that there will be no new ALR smart motorways rather than scrapping existing ones by adding a continuous hard shoulder (or converting them back to D3M!)
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ManomayLR
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by ManomayLR »

Converting current managed motorways back to D3M is a bad move.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by WHBM »

Certainly the hoo-hah involved on the north side of the M25 with inserting just two additional ERAs makes one realise that even minor engineering work on "Smart" motorways is extremely tedious.

I did genuinely wonder if those on the Smart Motorways team had made this deliberately over-engineered to stop further works being requested. It included :

- Coning off the whole of lane 1 embracing both works, which were about five miles apart.
- NOT putting ERAs where there was a nice adjacent wide and flat verge.
- Piling seeming to go halfway down to Australia.
- Long periods with nothing going on at all.
- Doing all the works from the motorway side with challenging access when they were one farm field away from an adjacent road they could hav e inserted a haul road to.
- Taking over 18 months on site to do the job.
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ManomayLR
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by ManomayLR »

It’s pathetic.

Yet another example of how the government and incompetent agencies like NH have butchered something which was designed with good intentions.

I can promise you if all managed motorways today followed the M42 model that was originally trialed we’d have no problem.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by BF2142 »

Smart motorways always seemed like a massively over-engineered solution to a relatively small problem. Still, a nice little earner for the construction and tech companies involved. And it's win-win for them because if a decision was made to widen conventionally and reinstate the shoulders, the same firms will get the contracts. Long-term, we may end up paying much more than would have if we had just widened the road and paid for a little extra land.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by jnty »

WHBM wrote: Thu Sep 01, 2022 08:36
thomas417 wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 23:20
"She also pledged to ban smart motorways if she were to be elected prime minister, declaring that the “experiment hasn’t worked”."
One wonders why Grant Shapps never did this. It seems a cross-party point of agreement.
It's a cross-party point of Concern but I'm not sure anyone has fully committed to getting rid of them. I don't think either the government or the opposition have committed to banning them (yet) because they fear genuine widening would cost more in most cases and still want to be able to deliver and maintain capacity increases on motorways nonetheless. I would imagine Truss will go along with this given there's a long moratorium at the moment anyway (but figuring out what she'll actually do is really total guesswork at this point.)
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by ManomayLR »

If this is the pledge that the politicians finally stick to it’ll be a first
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by danfw194 »

I doubt Truss has any grasp of what a smart motorway is or how one works in practice (or is supposed to work). And to clarify, I'm not being sexist here, I would think exactly the same of Sunak.

There's nothing wrong with the smart motorway concept. Maybe there can be some complaints at the implementation but for me the concept is sound. It's just people haven't been educated on what they are or how to use them, unless they go seeking for the answers themselves.

As for the speed limit talk.....it'll just turn motorways into night time race tracks. Fatalities will rise exponentially.
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