The future of smart motorways

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A303Chris
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by A303Chris »

Interesting FOI on GOV UK this morning gives current status of all Smart Motorway schemes and design standard used.
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the cheesecake man
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Bendo wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 19:03 You would hope their kit would be intelligent enough to report back if it's faulty but maybe not.
:idea: Plan B: HE traffic officers could report any faulty signs seen while on patrol.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by darkcape »

A303Chris wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 09:13 Interesting FOI on GOV UK this morning gives current status of all Smart Motorway schemes and design standard used.

"M1 North Leicestershire". Basically confirms what we expected, a J21-23a ALR upgrade :facepalm:
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by ManomayLR »

darkcape wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 23:26
A303Chris wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 09:13 Interesting FOI on GOV UK this morning gives current status of all Smart Motorway schemes and design standard used.

"M1 North Leicestershire". Basically confirms what we expected, a J21-23a ALR upgrade :facepalm:
21 to 21A would be VSL with hard shoulder I presume, with 21A-23A being ALR.

If 35A-39 is also being upgraded then the only section of M1 between M25 and M62 to be conventional motorway would be J19-21. I don’t see why they don’t just finish it off for continuity purposes so there are 4 running lanes all the way through.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Patience is not a virtue - it's a concept invented by the dozy beggars who are unable to think quickly enough.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Conekicker wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 20:13 Colour me unsurprised.

https://www.saferhighways.co.uk/post/wh ... 5e300915b5
The fanboys will be briefing like mad to counter that.

This might explain though why the entry to the M60 at J15 has had a single 50 on an MS4 every time I've gone past it last week whilst all other signals were blank. Not even an NSL to cancel the one 50? It was at least working properly today because nature is healing and the M60 was at a standstill.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by thomas417 »

Conekicker wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 20:13 Colour me unsurprised.

https://www.saferhighways.co.uk/post/wh ... 5e300915b5
Seriously can we just get rid of this crap. All this to get around building some hard shoulders. Unbelievable really.

A national programme to install hard shoulders on all smart motorways, linking up the various refuge areas if you will, is the only sensible way forward. On roads as busy as these there should always be somewhere to pull off the road.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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They should just truncate future smart schemes to adding VSL only and leaving the hard shoulder as-is. In a world of climate change we don't deserve extra capacity.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Patrick Harper wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 10:37 They should just truncate future smart schemes to adding VSL only and leaving the hard shoulder as-is. In a world of climate change we don't deserve extra capacity.
Deserving it is irrelevant, we need it and not providing it will make things worse. Slow moving congested traffic causes more pollution and accidents than traffic moving smoothly. Worse deliberately throttling major routes will simply induce rat running along minor roads and through residential areas. In the bad old days before the North Circular was largely sorted out everybody had their own back doubles ready to use. Coming through the Dartford Tunnel and heading for the M11 my favoured route was along the B roads through South and North Ockenden to the A127 and along the A12 to Redbridge.

The same was true of the M1 between Apex Corner and the M6 before it was widened. My favourite Friday afternoon route in the 1980's from Wembley to NE England took me up the A41 to Hemel, along the B4506 and around the back of Whipsnade, across the Dunstable Downs and up the A5 to MK and Rugby joining the M1 at J20.

The M1 could be bumper to bumper with stop start traffic all the way from Mill Hill to Newport Pagnell on a bank holiday friday. The 2 lane section from J5 to J8 was a nightmare and J8 to J10 wasn't much better.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Which reminds me of a strange and potentially dangerous experience on the M1 last week:

- Signage came on imposing 40 limit.
- Signage also closed lanes 1 and 2, causing traffic to move over to 3 and 4. I moved to lane 3 and got caught behind a car that was doing a bit less than 40.

Traffic was light. After cruising along like this for some time, with just one or two cars passing us in lane 4, I noticed a tsunami of vehicles approaching at speed across all of the lanes behind us. One van even dived from lane 3 into lane 1 and undertook both me and the car in front at roughly double our speed, presumably because the flow in lane 4 wasn't fast enough for him.

Only when the next gantry came into sight did I realise what must have happened; the lower limit and lane closure signs must have been switched off just after I'd passed the last gantry, leaving me driving ridiculously slowly in the wrong lane without knowing that the restrictions had been lifted until the next gantry came into view.

I appreciate that there isn't much that can be done about such a situation, and also that such a situation will only affect a small number of vehicles for a few seconds, but it still struck me as being yet another reason for not driving on these roads if they can be avoided.
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Patrick Harper
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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KeithW wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 15:42Deserving it is irrelevant, we need it and not providing it will make things worse. Slow moving congested traffic causes more pollution and accidents than traffic moving smoothly. Worse deliberately throttling major routes will simply induce rat running along minor roads and through residential areas. In the bad old days before the North Circular was largely sorted out everybody had their own back doubles ready to use. Coming through the Dartford Tunnel and heading for the M11 my favoured route was along the B roads through South and North Ockenden to the A127 and along the A12 to Redbridge.

The same was true of the M1 between Apex Corner and the M6 before it was widened. My favourite Friday afternoon route in the 1980's from Wembley to NE England took me up the A41 to Hemel, along the B4506 and around the back of Whipsnade, across the Dunstable Downs and up the A5 to MK and Rugby joining the M1 at J20.

The M1 could be bumper to bumper with stop start traffic all the way from Mill Hill to Newport Pagnell on a bank holiday friday. The 2 lane section from J5 to J8 was a nightmare and J8 to J10 wasn't much better.
Rat-running is a nuisance but it's less of a nuisance long-term than the emissions generated by new construction and widening projects, and widening would be necessary to increase capacity if ALR schemes are found or decided to be deficient in terms of safety. More cars are getting AEB which reduce read-end shunts at slow speeds (i.e congestion), pollution isn't an issue with EVs and they also tend to hit peak efficiency at slow speeds (between 20 & 30mph) anyway. By 2030 many of the ALR advantages will be diminished.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Having used ALR on Smart Motorways I am ambivalent on them and never felt unsafe but assuming the consensus comes down against them then we have the following options bearing in mind that we have busted the bank funding the pandemic.
1. No action. Legal action and compensation will result after any deaths.
2. Keep ALR but lower speed across network e.g. 50mph. Frustration and complaints; slower journey times
3. Close Lane 1 and restore to hard shoulder. Congestion will restart and increasing delays across the network.
4. Widen motorway to provide hard shoulder on all schemes. Huge cost that cannot be afforded without cuts elsewhere, resistance to more land take.

You cannot undo what has been done, so assuming you have to make the decision then what would you do?
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Brenley Corner wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 18:02 Having used ALR on Smart Motorways I am ambivalent on them and never felt unsafe but assuming the consensus comes down against them then we have the following options bearing in mind that we have busted the bank funding the pandemic.
1. No action. Legal action and compensation will result after any deaths.
2. Keep ALR but lower speed across network e.g. 50mph. Frustration and complaints; slower journey times
3. Close Lane 1 and restore to hard shoulder. Congestion will restart and increasing delays across the network.
4. Widen motorway to provide hard shoulder on all schemes. Huge cost that cannot be afforded without cuts elsewhere, resistance to more land take.

You cannot undo what has been done, so assuming you have to make the decision then what would you do?
Option 5. Put in discontinuous hard shoulders, so wherever there is a choke point, eg bridge or whatever, dont have one, but where there is land to simply dig into and surface, do it. We dont need a continuous HS, but need far more than these absurdly spaced refuge areas.

If constraints prevent any kind of HS for a perior (eg urban/embankment or cutting) then go down to say a 1/2 mile refuge spacing, pretty much as we do but shorter gaps.


A key aspect of restoring the HS (option4) is to wreck the Highways and Govts budgets and plans so the civil servants that actually dreamt this up and enforced it on us, get bitten badly with all their pet projects ruined for another decade until this is sorted out - and that organisational lesson of not fabricating shortcuts in safety just for some nominal “capacity now”, reverberates for decades.

Ultimately 4 (or 5) is the only safe and long term answer so the sooner we bite that bullet and get on with it, the sooner it’ll be over. That would require “the long view” which politically and institutionally we are incapable of I suspect.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by Brenley Corner »

marconaf wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 19:44A key aspect of restoring the HS (option4) is to wreck the Highways and Govts budgets and plans so the civil servants that actually dreamt this up and enforced it on us, get bitten badly with all their pet projects ruined for another decade until this is sorted out - and that organisational lesson of not fabricating shortcuts in safety just for some nominal “capacity now”, reverberates for decades.

Ultimately 4 (or 5) is the only safe and long term answer so the sooner we bite that bullet and get on with it, the sooner it’ll be over. That would require “the long view” which politically and institutionally we are incapable of I suspect.
The decision to restore hard shoulders will be so expensive (buying land, re-engineering the technology, recabling, earthworks, surfacing, traffic management etc) that its impact will fall far beyond highways budgets with education and healthcare budgets being reduced to provide hard shoulders on motorways. The years and years (decade or possibly two) of roadworks would also be unpalatable.

I suspect we will either end up with Smart Motorways permanently reduced to 50mph in their entirety, or Lane 1 painted to restore a permanent hard shoulder (i.e. the quickest, simplest, and cheapest option).
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Option 6, see how effective SVD is when it's up and running before chucking the whole thing in the bin on the say-so of people who have been against the idea from the start.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Big L wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 20:42 Option 6, see how effective SVD is when it's up and running before chucking the whole thing in the bin on the say-so of people who have been against the idea from the start.
100%. And also, upgrade the CCTV to be a bit more resilient so they don't fog up all the time...
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Big L wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 20:42 Option 6, see how effective SVD is when it's up and running before chucking the whole thing in the bin on the say-so of people who have been against the idea from the start.
The reason SVD is so slow to roll out is because the version the spinmasters have said we're getting simply does not exist. HE were more bothered about the PR than the actual practical realities.

Smart motorways don't bother me because I drive on them all the time and when I don't none of the other roads have hard shoulders either, but I have a huge issue with the mindset that brought it to the table - it's corner and cost cutting using nebulous tech-bro answers to problems that technology simply isn't ready for.

I am still firmly of the belief that the rebrand to National Highways is purely to Windscale away the PR and glossy brochure stains HE have graced the English trunk road network with.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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marconaf wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 19:44
Brenley Corner wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 18:02 Having used ALR on Smart Motorways I am ambivalent on them and never felt unsafe but assuming the consensus comes down against them then we have the following options bearing in mind that we have busted the bank funding the pandemic.
1. No action. Legal action and compensation will result after any deaths.
2. Keep ALR but lower speed across network e.g. 50mph. Frustration and complaints; slower journey times
3. Close Lane 1 and restore to hard shoulder. Congestion will restart and increasing delays across the network.
4. Widen motorway to provide hard shoulder on all schemes. Huge cost that cannot be afforded without cuts elsewhere, resistance to more land take.

You cannot undo what has been done, so assuming you have to make the decision then what would you do?
Option 5. Put in discontinuous hard shoulders, so wherever there is a choke point, eg bridge or whatever, dont have one, but where there is land to simply dig into and surface, do it. We dont need a continuous HS, but need far more than these absurdly spaced refuge areas.

If constraints prevent any kind of HS for a perior (eg urban/embankment or cutting) then go down to say a 1/2 mile refuge spacing, pretty much as we do but shorter gaps.


A key aspect of restoring the HS (option4) is to wreck the Highways and Govts budgets and plans so the civil servants that actually dreamt this up and enforced it on us, get bitten badly with all their pet projects ruined for another decade until this is sorted out - and that organisational lesson of not fabricating shortcuts in safety just for some nominal “capacity now”, reverberates for decades.

Ultimately 4 (or 5) is the only safe and long term answer so the sooner we bite that bullet and get on with it, the sooner it’ll be over. That would require “the long view” which politically and institutionally we are incapable of I suspect.
Option 5 you say?

Well yes, except ALL the verge infrastructure would need shifting to enable that. That's typically the safety barrier, comms cables and drainage as a minimum. Would the extra drained area require larger diameter pipes/more gullies to cope with the additional water? Then when you look at the number of signs and gantries that present, do you move them or just build up to them - or do you just move the easy/cheap ones and leave the rest?

Where there are embankments, the earthworks to widen them would be rather costly. Cuttings possibly not quite so expensive to sort out but a long, long way from "ten bob and a pickled egg" to sort out.

That would all result in a lot of discontinuities in the, (at best partially), restored hardshoulder and all because when these ALR schemes were designed no thought was given to future-proofing them to enable widening without abortive costs for kit that would be in the way.

Even adding a few extra ERAs, I do beg your pardon, "Place(s) of relative safety" or whatever they are called this week, would certainly require some recently built infrastructure to be locally ripped out and moved back. There's also no such thing as "cheap" when comms cables are involved.

I don't disagree that 5 is the most desirable option but I rather think HE/NH's "blinkered/cost driven" approach to scheme design has created some expensive obstacles to it ever happening, at least to any great extent. It would be nice if some comparatively easy "quick-win" locations could be identified and built but I doubt there would be all that many nationally and it would still take several years for them to be designed and built.

Brynn's post above - hammer, nail, head.
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Re: The future of smart motorways

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Big L wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 20:42 Option 6, see how effective SVD is when it's up and running before chucking the whole thing in the bin on the say-so of people who have been against the idea from the start.
HE/NH relying on technology to get them out of a hole?

Again?

I'd like to think "Once bitten twice shy" would be at the front of their mind.

I'd like to think that but...
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Re: The future of smart motorways

Post by ais523 »

Owain wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 16:18 Which reminds me of a strange and potentially dangerous experience on the M1 last week:

- Signage came on imposing 40 limit.
- Signage also closed lanes 1 and 2, causing traffic to move over to 3 and 4. I moved to lane 3 and got caught behind a car that was doing a bit less than 40.

Traffic was light. After cruising along like this for some time, with just one or two cars passing us in lane 4, I noticed a tsunami of vehicles approaching at speed across all of the lanes behind us. One van even dived from lane 3 into lane 1 and undertook both me and the car in front at roughly double our speed, presumably because the flow in lane 4 wasn't fast enough for him.

Only when the next gantry came into sight did I realise what must have happened; the lower limit and lane closure signs must have been switched off just after I'd passed the last gantry, leaving me driving ridiculously slowly in the wrong lane without knowing that the restrictions had been lifted until the next gantry came into view.

I appreciate that there isn't much that can be done about such a situation, and also that such a situation will only affect a small number of vehicles for a few seconds, but it still struck me as being yet another reason for not driving on these roads if they can be avoided.
In general, there seems to be an under-use of "end of restrictions" signs ("End" or NSL), although they may not have helped in this particular case. In my opinion, they should be switched on for some time after the restrictions end, so that people who were in the restrictions become aware that they no longer apply (as opposed to potentially getting no indication as to whether the gantries are broken or the restrictions have been silently revoked). The official guidance seems to disagree with me, suggesting keeping them on for 3 minutes at most, and in practice they seem to be on for a much shorter length of time or not at all.

FWIW, I had a similar experience to you once, but it was on a non-smart section of the M6, which meant that the limit and closure signs were advisory rather than mandatory; that made it a bit easier to use common sense in a situation like that one, but also reduced compliance with the restrictions in the first place. (It also meant that VMSes were few and far between, with only the occasional MS1 trying to explain what was going on, and mostly failing due to its tiny screen.)
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