ACCIDENT BLACKSPOT
EXTRA LANES BUT NO LIGHTS ON MAIN ROUTES Experts’ safety fears as new sections of motorway are left in total darkness
Keith McLeod The flagship £500million motorway improvement for the central belt has sparked safety fears after Transport Scotland added extra lanes – but took away the lights.
Swathes of the eight-lane M74 have been plunged into darkness decades after the road was fully lit up to improve safety.
And the new M8 – filling the so-called “missing link” between Edinburgh and Glasgow – has been built with no lights except at the main junctions.
The road it replaces – the old A8 dual carriageway – was fully lit up despite its outdated design and lack of capacity.
Now the Institute of Advanced Motorists have said Transport Scotland must prove their policy of stripping out the lights is safe.
They have also cal led for an “in- depth” study to assess the effects of darkened urban motorways.
Extra lanes were added to the M8, M74 and M73 east of Glasgow to improve journey times.
A new underpass was bui lt for the A725 while the route between Glasgow and Edinburgh was finished.
The new works were completed just weeks ago but now it is safety rather than congestion which is causing concern. It has been normal practice for UK urban motorways to have lights.
Long- suf fering motorists faced two years of roadworks and disruption while the work was carried out.
Transport Scotland said the new road capacity would cut journey times by up to 20 minutes.
But industry sources say the missing lights on the M74 have created one of the few new stretches of UK motorway with eight-lane capacity which is not lit up.
One said: “It’s surprising these roads have been upgraded to this standard on the one hand and downgraded on the other.
“The capacity, signage and junctions are all improved but, for motorways running through such built-up areas, you would expect them to have lights.
“The lights had been on this section of the M74 for more than 30 years.
“And the old A8, despite its terrible junctions, had been fully lit up for even longer.”
It is also claimed that with traffic levels much increased since the lights were originally installed, the need for lighting is even greater now.
In England, motorway lights have been switched off between midnight and 5am in experimental areas covering around 121 miles of motorway.
This has been done on the grounds of cost and carbon emissions reduction.
Neil Greig, director of policy and research at the Institute of Advanced Motorists, said of the Scottish roads: ” It wasn’t clear from the original plan what was going to happen. It was fairly late The M74 from junction 6, Hamilton, used to be fully lit all the way into south Glasgow, a distance of about 12 miles.
But huge stretches of the road – from Hamilton to Raith, and Raith to Maryville – are now in the dark. The three on before people cottoned on to the fact the roads weren’t going to be fully lit. In an ideal scenario, we’d like to have lit motorways.”
“There have been experiments with switching off the lights on English motorways and these have shown no effect on safety.
“But these tend to have been done on fairly quiet motorways whereas the M74 and M8 are exceptionally busy.
“I would urge ge Transport Scotland nd to do an in- depth h major study.
“It just needs one major crash to show that the lights would pay for main junctions on this stretch of road have had lights installed but the gaps between the junctions on the eight-lane motorway have had their lights removed.
On the section of the M8 between Newhouse and Baillieston there are
themselves. It would have been better to have retained the lights and then tried switching them off to assess the results. “If they have to replace the lights in future, it will cost them more in the long run. “The onus is on Transport Scotland to prove, firstly, that this is safe and, secondly, what benefits the no-lights policy has delivered to motorists on the M74 with the money tthey saved.” The Royal Society fo r the Prevention Pr of Accidents’ road roa safety ma nager Sandy San Allan said: “Lights on no lights except at the restricted access Shawhead junction.
There are no lights at junction 6A for Motherwell/ Wishaw and no motorway lights for junction 7 Eurocentral. The eight-lane section of the M73 has retained its lights.
motorways are preferable because they improve visibility.”
A RoSPA study found driving dur ing darkness is more dangerous. They said: “Only a quarter of al l travel by car drivers is between the hours of 7pm and 8am, yet this period accounts for 40 per cent of fatal and serious injuries.”
Transport Scotland said: “The M8 M73 M74 Motorway Improvements Project includes significant capacity and safety improvements across the central Scotland motorway network.
“The l ighting is designed in accordance with current design standards which includes lighting at junctions and their approaches.”