The future of smart motorways

[Keiji]

My suggestion:

Replace ALR (n lanes with no hard shoulder, with ability to close lane 1) with HSR (n-1 lanes with hard shoulder, with ability to open hard shoulder).

That's it. I've said it before and I've now said it again. Despite that the theoretical capacity is identical, drivers respond far better to the latter arrangement.

[Berk]

Hmmm yeah, I thought that some consensus had been made to switch the other way - towards ALR, I mean.

When did that happen, what sort of debate (if any) was there?? I don’t remember reading about it. Was it a ministerial decision based on a report??

Though I guess it means the so called “capacity benefits” are not realised - but then they’re phoney anyway. If you can’t guarantee free-flow conditions for a substantial period of time (as we can’t with ALR in use), the arrangement isn’t up to scratch.

[Keiji]

I'd really like to know too, why the powers that be decided to move from HSR to ALR. I haven't seen a single situation where choosing ALR over HSR has proven beneficial.

[Johnathan404]

I'd really like to know too, why the powers that be decided to move from HSR to ALR. I haven't seen a single situation where choosing ALR over HSR has proven beneficial.

Avoiding disasters like the incomprehensible layout of the M1 and M6 DHS is a pretty big benefit.

[DB617]

Okay, so, given we have grievances with the closure of soft verges by 'penning-in' the traffic with barriers, my first suggestion would be to improve safety on some sections, where possible, surveying and removing the penning-in where safe to do so would be a step in the right direction? It's sort of like a return to the first motorways, creating roads with sub-standard hard shoulders like some A roads and the M50 have, which are not official, consistent or prepared but can - and, as I have witnessed, often do - serve as a way to get your vehicle into better safety.

People are always looking for their personal place of best safety in the event of a motorway incident. Closing off all avenues of escape by making ERAs out of practical reach and separating drivers from relatively safe verges using barriers is not exactly passively safe design. Hm, now that I mention passive safety, nothing about ALR is passively safe where ERAs are any more than about half a mile apart. If the active safety measures (technology dependent on controllers) fail, you can easily become a tiny car with maybe a set of working hazard lights between you and approaching heavy traffic in a live lane on a motorway that was safer for you prior to its upgrade. It's not a good look.

[Chris5156]

My suggestion:

Replace ALR (n lanes with no hard shoulder, with ability to close lane 1) with HSR (n-1 lanes with hard shoulder, with ability to open hard shoulder).

That's it. I've said it before and I've now said it again. Despite that the theoretical capacity is identical, drivers respond far better to the latter arrangement.

I literally could not disagree more. Driver understanding on HSR motorways is appalling. I've yet to use one where, if the hard shoulder is in use, it's being used to its full potential, or when it's out of use, there isn't some fool driving in it anyway.

HSR is no longer being installed because it's poorly understood and horribly confusing. The sooner it's remarked as a continuous fourth running lane the better. Johnathan is right to call it a disaster; in design terms that's exactly what it is. I defy anyone to drive the M1 between Luton and the M6 and tell me that the HSR works better than the ALR. Personally I find the HSR sections not just confusing but incredibly stressful.

The difference in usability is very straightforward, and for me looks like this:

• HSR gives you a part of the road surface that is marked like a hard shoulder (except through junctions, where it's marked as an absolute dog's dinner) which drivers are told they can't use, except when wordy electronic signs and confusing rotating signs say they can. The rest of the road surface is marked as normal running lanes, which drivers are told they can use, except when overhead electronic signs say they can't.
• ALR gives you four running lanes, which are marked as normal running lanes, and which drivers are told they can use except when overhead electronic signs say they can't.

In other words ALR gives you one set of rules that apply to the whole carriageway, instead of the HSR expectation that drivers will deal with one set of rules for one lane and another for the rest, and the further expectation that drivers will correctly interpret markings and signs to mean one thing when the hard shoulder is open and another when it's closed. Plus, HSR gives the illusion of a hard shoulder for safely stopping in when, in reality, the chances of someone tooling along it because its purpose is ambiguous and they think it's open are hugely increased.

Bottom line for me: the left lane of a motorway should be either a hard shoulder or a running lane. Don't confuse things.

[Keiji]

Thanks Chris. While I still completely disagree, these are some good points and the kind of discussion I was hoping for

Let's look at it this way. You say HSR is poorly understood: well, I'd agree with you there; many drivers don't drive in the hard shoulder even if it's open. I would say that ALR is also poorly understood: when Lane 1 is closed, many drivers continue to drive in it anyway. The difference is this: Someone not understanding HSR reduces overall road capacity a bit (an inconvenience, but safe). Someone not understanding ALR could lead to someone smashing into a stranded vehicle, or cutting into Lane 2 at the last minute to avoid such a vehicle (incredibly unsafe).

It's far more important, IMO, that the "default" position is "don't drive in the leftmost strip of tarmac on the road", and people only drive in it when those people know what they are doing: those people will be checking the gantries and will know when they have to move out of it. By putting people there by default, many of those people won't be paying attention to the gantries and won't think to move over til it's too late if at all.

You say ALR gives a set of rules that apply to all lanes, while HSR makes the leftmost "lane" different: I would argue that that's exactly as it should be; the leftmost lane is different because it's where you're supposed to stop in an emergency and thus may contain frequent obstacles. Yes, someone may become stranded in another lane, but this is far more rare, and people in offside lanes are generally paying more attention to be able to get out of them if necessary. You say HSR has the expectation that drivers correctly interpret markings and signs: yes, but I would argue (as above) that failure to do so only results in a minor inconvenience, and ALR gives this same expectation, except that failure in this case could result in a fatal collision. Yes some drivers do tool it along in the hard shoulder, but some drivers tool it along anywhere, and lorry drivers who have fallen asleep won't see lane closure signs or obstacles in front of them either, so HSR doesn't make this any worse.

I also don't buy the arguments that layouts through junctions are hard to understand within HSR stretches. However, my real-world experience is a little limited here; the main such junction I'm familiar with is Almondsbury, where I do feel it works very well. I don't have a problem with arrangements where the solid line suddenly turns to a dotted line or vice versa, or a sign indicates that you can drive through the diagonal taper line: like any situation, once you've gotten used to how it works, it's not a problem. Perhaps the bigger problem is that HSR wasn't given enough of a chance to prove itself with more drivers before the designers chickened out and went for ALR instead? I'd be interested to see GSV links of layouts you feel are confusing.

[Micro The Maniac]

A driver hitting a stopped vehicle is bad planning and ignorance. Those who think overhead signs don't apply to them, etc.

Yeah, but... while I agree that there is no excuse for hitting a stopped vehicle, the overhead signs are not well operated.

Take a recent example:

I joined the M3 from the M25... passing Chobham Common, a car was stationary in Lane 1, with hazzards flashing (with occupants safely behind the barrier). Prior to the stranded vehicle, the overhead signs were all off, and the MS4s all blank.

However, the next MS4 had the message "Reports of an obstruction" while the next gantry had a 50 limit posted - these were repeated at each gantry and MS4 all the way to the end of the ALR after J4a (over 10 miles later)!

What would have been really useful, would have been for a lower speed limit and Lane 1 to have been closed for the half-mile before the stranded vehicle, and "all clear" to have been signalled once past it!

[darkcape]

I'd really like to know too, why the powers that be decided to move from HSR to ALR. I haven't seen a single situation where choosing ALR over HSR has proven beneficial.

As others have said, the M1 J11-12 Is particularly bad due to junctions being so close together.

The HE also moved towards ALR because opening the hard shoulder is a resource-intense activity, a human op must go through and check each camera in turn to ensure its safe to open the lane. By the time theyve gone through and checked someone may have stopped and the process has to start again. Far easier to just have it open all the time.

[Ruperts Trooper]

Driver understanding on HSR motorways is appalling.

Driver understanding on HSR and ALR motorways is appalling - I don't see how you can use driver standards to justify one or the other.

[Andy33gmail]

In other words ALR gives you one set of rules that apply to the whole carriageway, instead of the HSR expectation that drivers will deal with one set of rules for one lane and another for the rest ... Don't confuse things.

Yes, but how do the signs convey whether L1 is usable as a hard shoulder (breakdowns, police tugs etc) or closed (massive pothole, oil in the lane, mobile roadworks). In practice I think the gantry would show red X for closed, blank for hard shoulder and NSL for open, but that could easily be misunderstood

[fras]

ALR is a complete dead end and of no use in dealing with the traffic levels we have on certain sections of motorway. I have found that any incident with a vehicle stopped in Lane 1 invles closure of Lane 2 as well so emergency and recovery vehicles and staff can attend safely. So a traffic level which needs 4 lanes is reduced to 2 lanes, resulting in chaos for several hours. The only way is to widen properly and maintain the hard shoulder except where not possible such as at bridges over or under. We already haved part HS near me on the M6, with signs indicating "No Hard Shoulder for nn yards", so really nothing strange about a discontinuous hard shoulder. Essentially the ERAs become much longer.

[IAN]

The M5 between 3 and 4 was widened with a discontinuous hard shoulder over 30 years ago, I''ve never heard of any particular issues caused by this. The only disadvantage I can see is that the emergency services wouldn't be able to use the HS to reach the scene of an accident as quickly as if the HS was continuous.

Ok, in theory the earthworks would be more expensive and time consuming than ALR but then surely some of the cost would be offset by not having to install expensive lane management systems?

Ian (M5 Driver)

[Johnathan404]

Let's look at it this way. You say HSR is poorly understood: well, I'd agree with you there; many drivers don't drive in the hard shoulder even if it's open. I would say that ALR is also poorly understood: when Lane 1 is closed, many drivers continue to drive in it anyway. The difference is this: Someone not understanding HSR reduces overall road capacity a bit (an inconvenience, but safe). Someone not understanding ALR could lead to someone smashing into a stranded vehicle, or cutting into Lane 2 at the last minute to avoid such a vehicle (incredibly unsafe).

I think your allegiance towards HSR (now DHS in Highways England parlance, formerly ATM) is perfectly reasonable on paper. I would agree. It makes sense to have a motorway with two modes: one with a high capacity but lower safety (and therefore lower speed limit) - that's hard shoulder in use; and one with a lower capacity but higher safety (and therefore higher speed limit) - that's hard shoulder not in use.

The problem is this theory has not proven so simple in practice. The benefits to DHS have proven to be minimal while the issues it causes have proven to be significant. I am thinking of M1 J11-12 and M6 J9-11a because I think they are truly appalling, but I am a regular user of the M42 and occasional user of the M4 and see no redeeming qualities in those two either.

As road designers (or fantasy road designers!), we need to be designing roads that are intuitive to use. If we want road layouts to be respected, we need to give people something they can understand. This is where DHS completely falls down. It's tempting to shout "just read the signs", "doesn't anybody read the Highway Code", "why are people so stupid" - I often do - but this doesn't change the simple fact: people don't understand it. That's different to people ignoring red Xs because they don't like them or they weren't looking, this is people trying to do the right thing and still getting it wrong. I'm not sure "you'll get used to it" really works on a major inter-city motorway.

DHS (or whatever it was called at the time) was added to the Highway Code around the time most of my friends learned to drive, so I can tell you first-hand: they read the rules and did not understand them. As I recall, there is one rule telling you to never drive in the hard shoulder on a motorway, followed by a rule stating that "on some motorways, you may drive on the hard shoulder". I have been asked by otherwise competent and intelligent drivers who passed their theory test during this period "is this one of those motorways where you're allowed to drive on the hard shoulder?" (no, this is the M42 VSL, not the M42 DHS, go back to school).

I have reported my experience of the M6 several times, but I was there a few days ago and the same thing happened, so I will tell you what it's like driving through J10:
- a small, unlit sign on the left says "hard shoulder ends". This is easily missed among all the sign clutter, especially as the motorway network now has so many signs about hard shoulders we are used to ignoring them. It doesn't tell you what to do with this information.
- a few hundred yards later, people start to notice that a lane has appeared on the left. By the time we are at the underpass, just about everybody in the former lane one has moved left to the new lane one. Each driver notices at a different point so this totally disrupts the traffic flow.
- a few hundred yards later, there is one sign telling you that the lane is ending, positioned by the end of the lane. A second, electronic sign is positioned after it ends. Local authority roadworks have greater warning of a lane closure than that! So everybody who has not-long moved over now panics and moves back, often clipping the hard shoulder.
- in addition, on the M6 southbound, the lane closing signage comes after the signs for the next junction, so you are telling people to move right at the same time as telling them to move left

At this point I can guarantee you none of those drivers are saying "this is a typical early experiment at through-junction running on a difficult DHS scheme". They are making typical non-Sabristi comments like "why do they have lanes which appears and disappear with no warning". And I can't blame them or fault their interpretation of the information provided.

This is an example of poor implementation. I would be happy to turn a blind eye to it if there was an example of a clear and logical implementation of TJR. But I've never found one.

Meanwhile, DHS doesn't just cause driver confusion but encourage it by taking one of the most basic rules of driving (don't drive in the hard shoulder) and tearing it up. The M42 in particular seems to be a magnet for people driving in the closed hard shoulder. It's hard to know whether they're doing it out of ignorance or malice, but you could argue that this isn't a serious problem if they are at least doing it on roads designed for HSR, with all their CCTV and warning signs. Problem is they aren't, they are also doing it on other parts of the M42 and could decide to do it on any part of the motorway network. We have unleashed a beast.

Let's be honest, it would be a foolish quest to think you could completely beat out this confusion with driver education. Even so, I would probably support trying to do that if I thought there were clear benefits to hard shoulder running. But I'm struggling to find any:

- on busy roads, the hard shoulder seems to be open permanently, meaning it's just an elaborate and confusing implementation of ALR
- as a result the disruption caused by incidents is still significant. Every single complaint about ALR is true for DHS with the hard shoulder open, including the issue of poor drainage on the M6 verges (rarely discussed!)
- the benefit of DHS was originally that it 'fails safe', but this is no longer true: a red x is normally used over the hard shoulder during normal running, and electronic 'lane closing' signs are required at through-junction running with hard shoulder closed
- if the motorway network cannot function without the hard shoulder open (M6 J9 cannot), 'fail safe' becomes a terrifying prospect. Switch the power off for a bit of work and hours of delays ensue.
- it requires worded VMS to function, which is never a good thing (especially the 'hard shoulder not in use' reminders which were supposed to be self-evident)
- it requires more manpower to operate
- the capacity improvement is lower with DHS due to driver confusion (I know it's tempting to say 'that's their problem', but if you're paying for a scheme which is supposed to increase capacity then it becomes your problem)
- as raised before, you are taking some black and white rules and introducing shades of grey, which is a really bad way to do things

TL;DR, your take on whether ALR is a cost-efficient alternative to widening or a dangerous one will depend on your interpretation of the facts and the debate will go on forever. However it seems pretty clear that DHS offers the worst of both worlds, and was inevitably going to be a stepping stone to ALR by introducing small sections of it. The best thing we can do is completely eradicate it so that decent drivers don't have to prepare themselves for a couple of miles of mysterious 'super motorway' where normal rules don't apply.

[ais523]

I think smart motorways should make more use of advisory lane closures. If you have a lane closure coming up but vehicles don't need to be out of the lane right now, use an advisory lane closure sign (either at a fixed taper point or on an MS4, they both have a way to show it). That way, the red X can be reserved for situations that are truly important.

Advisory speed limits are also possible in cases where the speed reduction doesn't need to be instant, but that would likely just cause confusion.

[Micro The Maniac]

I think smart motorways should make more use of advisory lane closures.

I'm not sure I understand...?

Either the lane is open, closing (white "move over" arrows) or is closed (red "x")

Oh, and there should be a limit (2?) of white "move over" arrows before it becomes a Red "X" to discourage numpties from belting up the closing lane after everyone has moved over (because there's three miles to go until the X)

[Big L]

Oh, and there should be a limit (2?) of white "move over" arrows before it becomes a Red "X" to discourage numpties from belting up the closing lane after everyone has moved over (because there's three miles to go until the X)

To stop people from using lanes that are open?

[Owain]

Bottom line for me: the left lane of a motorway should be either a hard shoulder or a running lane. Don't confuse things.

Absolutely.

The M62 western approach to Leeds (for M621) has variable HSR; as you say in the non-quoted parts of your post, many drivers don't use the hard shoulder when they are permitted to do so, while others use it when they are not. I use it, if permitted, but you're right to describe it as stressful because deliberately looking for the signs to see whether it's open or not before moving into it is a distraction from simply driving on the motorway. And, when I am sure I am allowed to use it, I find it expedient to check the nearside mirror to make sure that I'm not about to move into the path of somebody who is already using it to undertake everybody who isn't.

By contrast, much of the M1 south of Leeds as permanently ALR. This works better, because of the lack of confusion. Of course, there are always drivers who think that their car should only ever be in lane 2, but they'd do that anyway whether there was a hard shoulder or not!

I'd like to see all the gizmos gone, but ALR is vastly better than variable HSR, in my experience.

[Debaser]

I'd suggest future-proofing them at the design stage would be wise, including but not limited to:

1) Widening the verge where possible to ease the construction of a hard shoulder or extra traffic lane in future.
2) Setting back drainage, safety fencing, traffic signs and other infrastructure out of the path of this future widening.
3) Providing emergency refuge areas at 1 mile intervals, regardless of how difficult the topography at the site might be.
4) Lighting the route - it's far easier to see a broken down vehicle on a lit section.

Nice ideas, but all this discussion ignores the elephant in the room which is Highways England's poor budget management. Several of the schemes I've worked on for RIS1 have been initially all go and then, literally a couple of weeks later, all stop as the PMs discover they don't have the budget to cover the design work. The same has happened on schemes to upgrade normal motorways to smart motorway standard. My hope for the New Year is that senior management within HE get a grip on this most fundamental issue of money available to both design and construct their projects.

[Helvellyn]

Nice ideas, but all this discussion ignores the elephant in the room which is Highways England's poor budget management. Several of the schemes I've worked on for RIS1 have been initially all go and then, literally a couple of weeks later, all stop as the PMs discover they don't have the budget to cover the design work. The same has happened on schemes to upgrade normal motorways to smart motorway standard. My hope for the New Year is that senior management within HE get a grip on this most fundamental issue of money available to both design and construct their projects.

Converting the existing hard shoulder will always be cheaper than doing the same and adding a new one, even if it's very intermittent. Even with decent budget management you'll get fewer miles of widened motorway from it, so which do you choose? IMO better less done well than a lot done badly.

I agree with the upthread comments about hard shoulder running, that was a dead end idea.