The future of smart motorways

[Darren]

And yet on the ALR sections where extra ERAs are being installed, a lane is taken out for the duration of the construction period. In the case of the M1 in South Yorkshire, that's around 18 months, up to "Winter 2024". Might one suggest that for that length of time one might have been able to construct a hard shoulder or two?

Yes, that'd have been a great idea - but the snag is the land take required means it's a non-starter. Certainly the projects nearest me (including the M20) were constrained by land take - acquiring extra land for a hard shoulder would have been a PITA in term of planning, and payments, so they took the cheap, fast and easy option. Of course we now get to "enjoy" going back to 3 lanes with a bonus 50mph speed limit for a year or more, which is just great.

This country is simply incapable of doing anything major in terms of infrastructure in a timely fashion, it seems. Just look at how much fuss has been made over building a railway line (now cancelled), an extra runway at an airport (decades of arguing and still no closer) or even a tunnel under the Thames (hundreds of thousands of pages of planning and still a long way from works starting). The period of the 60s to the 90s now looks like a golden era in comparison, perhaps just squeezing into the early 2000s with the M2 upgrade.

I'm really dreading my regular journeys to Reading now (from Sheppey in Kent). It looks like the M4 and M3, as well as chunks of the M25 and M20 are all going to be coned down to three lanes with a 50 limit at the same time, which will be pretty dreary to deal with. At least when the smartification was underway it was generally only one motorway being done at a time!

[DB617]

Fair point - I dread to think what a lot of major projects like the Medway Viaduct, the M5 across the Severn levels, the M4 Second Severn Crossing and many more would have looked like under today's planning and delivery conditions. This country would be in big trouble if we were only now thinking of building these critical bits of infrastructure.

[nowster]

ALR failure - it's just a normal D4, i.e., fails safe by any normal measure.

There's no such thing as a normal D4.

Not sure what you mean by that - there are plenty of stretches of non-ALR/DHS D4... the M1 and M25 being two obvious motorways - in fact the M25 had D5 and even D6 on its western stretch.

But they're D4M formation (ie. with shoulders). M60 through the Irwell ("death") valley is D4M from the 1990s. The stretch between Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne was built as D4M.

In fact some of the original D4M stretches had shoulders on either side of the running lanes.

D4 on non-motorways with 70mph limits was incredibly rare.

[nowster]

I won't go through the whole argument again here, but, briefly, left-most lanes operate in an inefficient 'lane-changing' state because they're influenced by exits and entrances, whereas right-most lanes are insulated and flow un-interruptedly.

Until you get the lane 3 hogger with no situational awareness at 50mph.

[Conekicker]

An important difference is that (other than in some very low-speed situations) trains are driving to the signals, not on sight, whereas road vehicles are supposed to be driven on sight. A train driver seeing a green signal means they can proceed at the maximum allowable speed, even if they can't see far ahead. A driver on a road vehicle should never assume that any sign means they don't have to look at the road and respond to what's in it. If a driver enters an unsafe situation blindly that's entirely on them, whatever signs say. If a railway signal were to do that with a train it wouldn't be the fault of the driver.

Supposed to be, certainly. In which case there's no problem with there being a stopped vehicle in a live lane, and ALR is perfectly safe with no "smart" needed - drivers will see the stopped vehicle and stop before hitting it. In practice that isn't the case - so motorway traffic is clearly not driving completely "on sight" in practice. Which is why my suggestion was that, in case of failure of the "smart" systems, the speed limit should default to 40mph - at that speed, there's much more chance that drivers really can stop short of an unexpected obstruction.

On a normal D3 with hard shoulder there should be nearly always the full 295M SSD (120kph/70mph). HSR sections I am aware of varies, as a minimum, between 160m (80kph/50mph) and 215m (100kph/60mph) SSD. With ALR there are many relaxations on SSD in LBS1 (and occasionally LBS2).

M42 ATM etc was designed to be safe with everything off. This is not 'partially working'. Given the reliably of the technology, going all the way back to 2002, did not allow for 24/7 use, there was never the chance that the system could put out a default 40mph, nor drivers assume a 40 mph limit if every thing was off. In 2005 MTBY for a AMI in use up to 18 hours a day was supposed to be 5 years; on 24/7 it was calculated to be barely 6 months.

It has to be remembered that ATM/MM/SM were never safety schemes. Also ALR was driven by the technology specialists and not highway safety standards specialists. Without being smug, they were told.

Ah yes, the "told" ones.

We'll carefully skip over the hard fought battles there were to get the ROTTMS to have battery back-up and not have to rely on just mains power - like the permanent signalling does. Because, according to certain people, the mains power wouldn't fail. Nor the attitude of some that the batteries could be removed after a few years.

I've no idea what the current position on them is of course.

[tom1977]

As usual, National Highways make it hard to find anything on their website, but here is their official response to the Panorama programme

https://nationalhighways.co.uk/article/ ... echnology/

[Micro The Maniac]

Two weeks or so ago, work began on the M3 SMART section, to add (it is reported) 10 new emergency refuges - I assume this is five each way?

Of course, this means that we now have 12 miles each way with a 50 limit, and lane one coned off. For (at least) a year.

What's really frustrating is that lane one northbound has only just reopened after its subsidence issues.

[Bryn666]

Two weeks or so ago, work began on the M3 SMART section, to add (it is reported) 10 new emergency refuges - I assume this is five each way?

Of course, this means that we now have 12 miles each way with a 50 limit, and lane one coned off. For (at least) a year.

What's really frustrating is that lane one northbound has only just reopened after its subsidence issues.

The M5 J4A-6 and M6 J4A-6 (that's some pleasing symmetry) also say hello!

I'm fairly sure everyone was saying 8 years ago that 2km refuge spacing was bonkers and this would be the result, but no, the usual suspects carried on. NH know best, thou shalt not question them...

[RichardA35]

Two weeks or so ago, work began on the M3 SMART section, to add (it is reported) 10 new emergency refuges - I assume this is five each way?

Of course, this means that we now have 12 miles each way with a 50 limit, and lane one coned off. For (at least) a year.

What's really frustrating is that lane one northbound has only just reopened after its subsidence issues.

The M5 J4A-6 and M6 J4A-6 (that's some pleasing symmetry) also say hello!

I'm fairly sure everyone was saying 8 years ago that 2km refuge spacing was bonkers and this would be the result, but no, the usual suspects carried on. NH know best, thou shalt not question them...

A subset of HA/HE/NH who determined the policy and the SM standards - perhaps it was even put to the minister to adjudicate and decide - we've discused the crux of the issue that led to the "long" spacing of ERAs earlier this year.

The difference is that the very design of smart motorways involves removing a safety feature (the hard shoulder) which directly leads to an increase in incidents involving vehicles stopped in a live lane which would have otherwise been on the hard shoulder.

As has been outlined previously ad infinitum, you can identify a multitude of groups who will be negatively impacted by any road intervention. There is always a tradeoff. The difference with smart motorways is that people in cars, who are very often the beneficiaries of that tradeoff, are able to identify the very tightly defined group which is affected thus making it a highly emotive topic.

The problem is trade off, under GALE - as ALR is deigned, it is acceptable to concentrate residual risk on very small sub-population i.e. those people who could have got to the hard shoulder if there was one but not get to a ERA/EA. M42 ATM was designed on the principle that no groups were exposed to an increase in risk. The group I mentioned had risks maintained on M42 ATM by ERA at 500m centers (nominal), an enforced 50 mph speed limit and full SSD (to high point at least) in LBS1

[Bryn666]

Two weeks or so ago, work began on the M3 SMART section, to add (it is reported) 10 new emergency refuges - I assume this is five each way?

Of course, this means that we now have 12 miles each way with a 50 limit, and lane one coned off. For (at least) a year.

What's really frustrating is that lane one northbound has only just reopened after its subsidence issues.

The M5 J4A-6 and M6 J4A-6 (that's some pleasing symmetry) also say hello!

I'm fairly sure everyone was saying 8 years ago that 2km refuge spacing was bonkers and this would be the result, but no, the usual suspects carried on. NH know best, thou shalt not question them...

A subset of HA/HE/NH who determined the policy and the SM standards - perhaps it was even put to the minister to adjudicate and decide - we've discused the crux of the issue that led to the "long" spacing of ERAs earlier this year.

As has been outlined previously ad infinitum, you can identify a multitude of groups who will be negatively impacted by any road intervention. There is always a tradeoff. The difference with smart motorways is that people in cars, who are very often the beneficiaries of that tradeoff, are able to identify the very tightly defined group which is affected thus making it a highly emotive topic.

The problem is trade off, under GALE - as ALR is deigned, it is acceptable to concentrate residual risk on very small sub-population i.e. those people who could have got to the hard shoulder if there was one but not get to a ERA/EA. M42 ATM was designed on the principle that no groups were exposed to an increase in risk. The group I mentioned had risks maintained on M42 ATM by ERA at 500m centers (nominal), an enforced 50 mph speed limit and full SSD (to high point at least) in LBS1

I sincerely hope the wording put to the decision makers was more intelligible than the jargon quoted. Maybe policymaking which when done incorrectly results in avoidable deaths could start at first principles once again, as it is fundamentally evident the technobabble that was used to justify signalling and camera monitoring has not reflected the operational practice on the ground. Quite honestly some humility from the highways overlords who ignored these very tangible human concerns on the altar of techbro worship would perhaps go a long way to recovering most of the lost goodwill towards NH as an organisation that the mismanagement of smart motorways has brought about.

[MikeL]

"Work" also started about 2 weeks ago between M25 J23 and J25 - lane one coned off and signs up.

I say "work" has started - nothing tangible has actually happened yet - indeed it's not yet possible to tell where the new bays will be placed.

[Conekicker]

And yet on the ALR sections where extra ERAs are being installed, a lane is taken out for the duration of the construction period. In the case of the M1 in South Yorkshire, that's around 18 months, up to "Winter 2024". Might one suggest that for that length of time one might have been able to construct a hard shoulder or two?

Yes, that'd have been a great idea - but the snag is the land take required means it's a non-starter. Certainly the projects nearest me (including the M20) were constrained by land take - acquiring extra land for a hard shoulder would have been a PITA in term of planning, and payments, so they took the cheap, fast and easy option. Of course we now get to "enjoy" going back to 3 lanes with a bonus 50mph speed limit for a year or more, which is just great.

This country is simply incapable of doing anything major in terms of infrastructure in a timely fashion, it seems. Just look at how much fuss has been made over building a railway line (now cancelled), an extra runway at an airport (decades of arguing and still no closer) or even a tunnel under the Thames (hundreds of thousands of pages of planning and still a long way from works starting). The period of the 60s to the 90s now looks like a golden era in comparison, perhaps just squeezing into the early 2000s with the M2 upgrade.

I'm really dreading my regular journeys to Reading now (from Sheppey in Kent). It looks like the M4 and M3, as well as chunks of the M25 and M20 are all going to be coned down to three lanes with a 50 limit at the same time, which will be pretty dreary to deal with. At least when the smartification was underway it was generally only one motorway being done at a time!

Land take? Steepen the embankments/cuttings. That will work for considerable lengths. Land take should not be seen as a block to reinstating a hard shoulder, especially in rural areas, where a narrow strip of a field is required.

Just needs someone with the globes to push it through.

[Bryn666]

And yet on the ALR sections where extra ERAs are being installed, a lane is taken out for the duration of the construction period. In the case of the M1 in South Yorkshire, that's around 18 months, up to "Winter 2024". Might one suggest that for that length of time one might have been able to construct a hard shoulder or two?

Yes, that'd have been a great idea - but the snag is the land take required means it's a non-starter. Certainly the projects nearest me (including the M20) were constrained by land take - acquiring extra land for a hard shoulder would have been a PITA in term of planning, and payments, so they took the cheap, fast and easy option. Of course we now get to "enjoy" going back to 3 lanes with a bonus 50mph speed limit for a year or more, which is just great.

This country is simply incapable of doing anything major in terms of infrastructure in a timely fashion, it seems. Just look at how much fuss has been made over building a railway line (now cancelled), an extra runway at an airport (decades of arguing and still no closer) or even a tunnel under the Thames (hundreds of thousands of pages of planning and still a long way from works starting). The period of the 60s to the 90s now looks like a golden era in comparison, perhaps just squeezing into the early 2000s with the M2 upgrade.

I'm really dreading my regular journeys to Reading now (from Sheppey in Kent). It looks like the M4 and M3, as well as chunks of the M25 and M20 are all going to be coned down to three lanes with a 50 limit at the same time, which will be pretty dreary to deal with. At least when the smartification was underway it was generally only one motorway being done at a time!

Land take? Steepen the embankments/cuttings. That will work for considerable lengths. Land take should not be seen as a block to reinstating a hard shoulder, especially in rural areas, where a narrow strip of a field is required.

Just needs someone with the globes to push it through.

When the M40 was widened to D3M this is exactly what they did - gabions are everywhere: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ev9hmsneuXqV7AUN6

[jackal]

Land take? Steepen the embankments/cuttings. That will work for considerable lengths. Land take should not be seen as a block to reinstating a hard shoulder, especially in rural areas, where a narrow strip of a field is required.

Just needs someone with the globes to push it through.

It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of money than adding HS - basically like adding a running lane minus most of the safety benefit and virtually all of the capacity benefit.

[ManomayLR]

Land take? Steepen the embankments/cuttings. That will work for considerable lengths. Land take should not be seen as a block to reinstating a hard shoulder, especially in rural areas, where a narrow strip of a field is required.

Just needs someone with the globes to push it through.

It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of money than adding HS - basically like adding a running lane minus most of the safety benefit and virtually all of the capacity benefit.

The truth is, there are much more pragmatic ways of making managed motorways safer. Methods that are proven in other countries but which were discounted here due to various excuses that ended up costing way more than the money they may have saved.

Yes, I'm talking about the pathetic signage regulations on dynamic hard shoulder stretches that made them so confusing they became unviable. The solution - using standard always-on lane control signals - was staring us in the face and yet we tried to find a way around it.

In the heyday of smart motorways, mile upon mile of major strategic routes were gaining, or set to gain, vital extra capacity.

Not just motorways were set to benefit - but expressways ended up dead in the water, even though you can't remove a hard shoulder that isn't there.

The fact is, cancelling managed motorways became low-hanging fruit to gain public approval. Activists and social media worked with the press to whip up mass hysteria, and politicians capitalized on it.

It won't save so much money in the long-term, which is the exact same fallacy that has led to HS2 being repeatedly kicked down the road.

I maintain my personal position - reasonable principles, abysmal implementation.

ALR motorways in their original form (without SVD) were not safe, but SVD should have been given at least a few years to prove itself under the temporary pause.

Because the big question still remains that neither the activists nor the press have answered: what is the alternative?

Congestion will not stop. Accidents will not stop. A hard shoulder is not a guardian angel that will protect motorists from all of these things. If anything, the SVD, CCTV, VSL, lane control and enforcement is more like one.

[Bryn666]

Land take? Steepen the embankments/cuttings. That will work for considerable lengths. Land take should not be seen as a block to reinstating a hard shoulder, especially in rural areas, where a narrow strip of a field is required.

Just needs someone with the globes to push it through.

It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of money than adding HS - basically like adding a running lane minus most of the safety benefit and virtually all of the capacity benefit.

The hard shoulder is also there for the benefit of routine maintenance operations. You can't do verge maintenance without taking out a lane now, you can't clean signs without taking out a lane, etc, etc. This now means that former daytime tasks which were done under hard shoulder closures are now relegated to night time works which annoys local residents through noise and disruption, and the politically expedient answer is do not perform these tasks.

Smart motorways are virtually unusable after 8pm due to all the works that have to be forced into a short timescale thanks to this problem.

It was another thing raised, and ignored, by people who have no understanding that there is more to motorways than saturation flow.

[Chris5156]

Land take? Steepen the embankments/cuttings. That will work for considerable lengths. Land take should not be seen as a block to reinstating a hard shoulder, especially in rural areas, where a narrow strip of a field is required.

Just needs someone with the globes to push it through.

It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of money than adding HS - basically like adding a running lane minus most of the safety benefit and virtually all of the capacity benefit.

It would be interesting, given the current debate over SM, to see the business case and cost (adjusted for inflation) of the several schemes in Scotland during the late 90s and early 2000s to add hard shoulders to existing roads without any other widening work. From memory part of the A720 was treated that way, and the A8 between the two sections of M8 had them retrofitted in an extremely disruptive project. I think there may have been one or two others. There must have been an analysis of benefits and costs that ruled in favour of it.

[jnty]

Land take? Steepen the embankments/cuttings. That will work for considerable lengths. Land take should not be seen as a block to reinstating a hard shoulder, especially in rural areas, where a narrow strip of a field is required.

Just needs someone with the globes to push it through.

It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of money than adding HS - basically like adding a running lane minus most of the safety benefit and virtually all of the capacity benefit.

It would be interesting, given the current debate over SM, to see the business case and cost (adjusted for inflation) of the several schemes in Scotland during the late 90s and early 2000s to add hard shoulders to existing roads without any other widening work. From memory part of the A720 was treated that way, and the A8 between the two sections of M8 had them retrofitted in an extremely disruptive project. I think there may have been one or two others. There must have been an analysis of benefits and costs that ruled in favour of it.

Good point. I guess these were both D2 roads at the upper end of their capacity. Certainly in the case of A720, structures would make continuous widening very expensive, and a third lane chucked in wherever it would fit presumably wouldn't be that useful in the wider context of the road. However, taking the majority of dangerous and disruptive (but presumably fairly common) breakdowns off the road by adding a lower spec HS probably deals a significant dent in peak time disruption. It is certainly noticeable that breakdowns and collisions cause more disruption around the hard shoulderless section around Hermiston Gait. Another comparison is the Queensferry Crossing replacing the Forth Bridge which would often be disrupted by breakdowns.

Coming from Edinburgh in always surprised that roads like the A34 don't have a single section of HS.

[Conekicker]

As usual, National Highways make it hard to find anything on their website, but here is their official response to the Panorama programme

https://nationalhighways.co.uk/article/ ... echnology/

Carefully crafted wording there. So much to read between the lines. Not impressed at all.

[jackal]

As usual, National Highways make it hard to find anything on their website, but here is their official response to the Panorama programme

https://nationalhighways.co.uk/article/ ... echnology/

Carefully crafted wording there. So much to read between the lines. Not impressed at all.

Much more informative than Panorama's sensationalist drivel.