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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.
Traffic management has now gone out on the M6 northbound J4a - 5, with lane 4 now the work area.
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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.
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.
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!
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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.)
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.