Smart motorway rollout halted – for now
NO NEW SMART motorways will be built in Britain until there’s five years’ worth of safety data available from those opened before 2020, the government has confirmed.
The announcement comes in response to widespread criticism that all-lane-running motorways are less safe than conventional motorways, because the hard shoulder serves as a live lane and the replacement emergency refuge areas are spaced far apart (up to 1.5 miles), providing drivers with fewer safe places to stop in the event of a breakdown.
The House of Commons’ Transport Select Committee in November last year called for the smart motorways scheme to be halted, advising the government to collect five full years of safety and economic data from the 112 miles of them introduced before 2020.
During this time, National Highways will continue work on smart motorways already under construction, which will open “with technology in place to detect stopped vehicles”.
Meanwhile, the government has pledged £900 million to improving safety on existing smart motorways, of which £390m has been allocated to installing more than 150 new emergency refuge areas across the network by 2025. The rest of the money will go on new technology to detect stopped vehicles, installing concrete central reservations, improved guidance for road users and other safety improvements.
The news was hailed as “positive, pragmatic progress” by the AA, which noted that transport secretary Grant Shapps has agreed to investigate one of its own proposals from 2017: an ‘emergency corridor’ to enable emergency vehicles to quickly make their way through traffic jams in the absence of a permanent hard shoulder.
The government disagrees “with the view that smart motorways were rolled out prematurely or unsafely”, on the basis that they “are subject to high standards of design, risk assessment and construction, followed by detailed monitoring and evaluation once opened”.
However, an investigation by The Telegraph last year identified significant shortcomings in smart motorways’ management.
Staff at National Highways’ control centres reportedly labelled the computer system for managing smart motorways ‘Die Now’ following three system crashes in four days, while more than 10% of the roads’ CCTV cameras – used for spotting stopped vehicles – were found to be broken or pointing in the wrong direction.