View Full Version : Smart Motorways
So the rollout has been shelved for now
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59956911
I did a quick search and couldn't find a recent thread on these. I know as bikers we tend to try to avoid motorways but I'm sure we all use 'em from time to time, in cars/vans if not on bike.
So what's your view on these and this situation?
Personally I think calling them 'smart' was a terrible thing to do. But I appreciate the concepts, hazards, risks and trade-offs involved pretty well and so overall I think they were a reasonable solution in the circumstances to the growing traffic issues we were/are seeing in this country.
ethariel
12-01-22, 09:57 PM
Pro's - My employer makes a lot of cash out of 'Smart Motorway' projects.
Cons - No Hard Shoulder = freaking stupid beyond belief!
Luckypants
13-01-22, 08:25 AM
They are dangerous, period. Even the government cannot bury the statistics about how much more dangerous they are. Ethariel is right, someone is making a **** load of cash out of these projects and want the gravy train to continue despite the evidence.
I have a theory that so many Civil Service 'experts' become consultants straight from college and really have no practical experience in their craft. Wouldn't surprise me to find the idiot who dreamed up 'smart motorways' doesn't even drive.....
like all traffic systems its not the road structure that is at fault its the people driving on them.
smart motorways (lets call then "increased lane") are no more dangerous than dual carriageways.
one of the biggest factors of congestion is narrowing at end point but there is nowt we can do about the cities and towns road structure apart from turn everything one way and open up disused railways as "relief roads" instead of cycle/walk ways or build "stilted roads". or build inner city trunk/access roads at the end of motorways. that way traffic can filter into areas as it goes. but that would mean destroying peoples homes.
Luckypants
13-01-22, 12:30 PM
Nope, removing the safety lane giving broken down vehicles and their occupants nowhere to go is just plain stupid.
garynortheast
13-01-22, 12:50 PM
Nope, removing the safety lane giving broken down vehicles and their occupants nowhere to go is just plain stupid.
This.
Absolutely agree with Mike here.
Nope, removing the safety lane giving broken down vehicles and their occupants nowhere to go is just plain stupid.
well that same statement would apply to any road.
lets take a dual carriageway for instance. the speed limit is the same but there is no hard shoulder so what happens if you break down on one of those as its exactly the same as a dual lane motorway?
what if you cant reach the hard shoulder when your on a motorway?
having a hard shoulder is not a guarantee of safety or use. dont know if its the same down south but up here in scotchland the hard shoulder on some MW's are being turned into buss lanes.
They are dangerous, period. Even the government cannot bury the statistics about how much more dangerous they are. Ethariel is right, someone is making a **** load of cash out of these projects and want the gravy train to continue despite the evidence.
I have a theory that so many Civil Service 'experts' become consultants straight from college and really have no practical experience in their craft. Wouldn't surprise me to find the idiot who dreamed up 'smart motorways' doesn't even drive.....
There was an MP (A Tory one IIRC) who was part of/petitioning for the lowering of Motorway speed limits (this was some time ago - it featured on TG) & would you believe no Motorways went through his constituency
well that same statement would apply to any road.
lets take a dual carriageway for instance. the speed limit is the same but there is no hard shoulder so what happens if you break down on one of those as its exactly the same as a dual lane motorway?
what if you cant reach the hard shoulder when your on a motorway?
having a hard shoulder is not a guarantee of safety or use. dont know if its the same down south but up here in scotchland the hard shoulder on some MW's are being turned into buss lanes.
On a single lane road, everyone behind you has no choice except to stop . . . & usually most single lane roads have a place to pull to safety (Path, grass verge, turning etc). That's a safe place to have a break down.
Most dual carriageways i've been on (all over the UK) have an open grass verge/a space between this and the lane 1 where you could get most of your vehicle off the carriageway, and get yourself to some sort of safety.
They've specifically made these Motorways unsafe by choice. They have removed the safety aspect (and an access road for emergency vehicles) and replaced it with a small cut out every few miles.
The AVERAGE time for the response to a broken down car & shutting off a lane is 17 minutes. How many vehicles pass by on a Motorway in 17 minutes?!
like all traffic systems its not the road structure that is at fault its the people driving on them.
I suspected it would be a polarising topic but I'm generally wth Bibio on this - the main problem is the behaviours and expectations of road users, not the infrastructure.
Nope, removing the safety lane giving broken down vehicles and their occupants nowhere to go is just plain stupid.
What I can't get my head around is when we suddenly allowed lack of observation to become legitimate. Your vehicle should always be within the zone visible to other drivers so why are those other drivers not expected to notice and deal with that?
Surely if drivers aren't noticing and responding to hazards then they're not really driving safely enough?
The hard shoulder is not the 'safety lane', in just the same way as the outside lane is not the 'fast lane'. Maybe we've all just become lulled into thinking we should always be able to travel on motorways at 70mph (or more)? And we're not prepared for any different? Entitlement fallacy?
...How many vehicles pass by on a Motorway in 17 minutes?!
A lot, obviously. I know you didn't ask it for this reason, but I think that's is part of the problem facing the statisticians when 'justifying' the principles of the design. The numbers of vehicles needing the hard shoulder (i.e. 'in trouble') are very, very low compared to the total number of journeys being made on 'live lanes'. So the case becomes pretty clear cut in relative terms, especially when the problem that needs to be solved is one of easing congestion and getting traffic flowing.
For example, how many times have you broken down over the years? I must have made hundreds of motorway journeys over the years, covering 10s of thousands of miles, yet I can only recall breaking down and needing a hard shoulder twice in over 15-20 years. If that's a typical rate then multiply it up for all road users and needing to provide space for the many that want to move becomes masively dominant over giving space to those few that can't?
Sadly, though, even a very, very low %age of serious accidents is still a significant number more than zero. And that really, really matters if you're one of those involved in those incidents. That's where the ethical perspectives get difficult - where to set the threshold of acceptability for the unpleasant outcomes: How many serious accidents or deaths are acceptable for the sake of free(ish)-flowing roads?
How else should the congestion problem have been solved?
chris8886
13-01-22, 11:11 PM
Cons - No Hard Shoulder = freaking stupid beyond belief!
Nothing more needs saying this is absolutely the case I think.
How else should the congestion problem have been solved?
By making the driving tests harder, so that people who aren't actually good and competent enough to drive don't get to drive. A set number of times you can take the test as well, so people don't just "learn to pass the test" as they appear to, to me now.
How else should the congestion problem have been solved?
By educating drivers how to properly drive on a road in a manner that creates flowing traffic.
Drive in the correct lane - unless over taking be as far left as possible
Lane hogging - increases congestion by reducing the capacity available for traffic flow
Tail gating - continuous braking causes pointless & needless tail backs
Plan ahead - be in the correct lane for your slip road/motorway split
The majority of congestion on multilane carriageways is caused by selfish idiots. Unfortunately i live near the M3/M4 & M25 all of which have had extensive work to increase the number of lanes.
The result? the same congestion there was before.
Why? Because idiots still refuse to drive in the left hand lane, refuse to pay attention to the signage provided for junctions, and don't acknowledge mirrors exist and they need to GTF out the way after their overtake is complete.
How else should the congestion problem have been solved?
By making the driving tests harder, so that people who aren't actually good and competent enough to drive don't get to drive. A set number of times you can take the test as well, so people don't just "learn to pass the test" as they appear to, to me now.
How else should the congestion problem have been solved?
By educating drivers how to properly drive on a road in a manner that creates flowing traffic.
Drive in the correct lane - unless over taking be as far left as possible
Lane hogging - increases congestion by reducing the capacity available for traffic flow
Tail gating - continuous braking causes pointless & needless tail backs
Plan ahead - be in the correct lane for your slip road/motorway split
The majority of congestion on multilane carriageways is caused by selfish idiots. Unfortunately i live near the M3/M4 & M25 all of which have had extensive work to increase the number of lanes.
The result? the same congestion there was before.
Why? Because idiots still refuse to drive in the left hand lane, refuse to pay attention to the signage provided for junctions, and don't acknowledge mirrors exist and they need to GTF out the way after their overtake is complete.
It seems we agree on something here.:)
As I said before:
... the main problem is the behaviours and expectations of road users...
I'm also supportive of refresher tests (to be taken every 5 years, perhaps) to retain driving licence entitlement.
However, I'm less certain that, even with effectively taking 'incompetents' off the road, there won't still be too many vehicles for the roads we have (especially at peak times) and so we we will still need another solution for congestion. Maybe somebody in power sufficiently brave to tackle our 'car/HGV culture' and say "tough, that's your lot - queue as traffic or try another time or another form of transport!". Alongside license competence reforms, I'd accept the roads money being spent solely on junction upgrades, small new link roads and surfacing instead of lengthy new lane upgrades
SV650rules
17-01-22, 03:51 PM
Even the roadside recovery services with their orange strobes are reluctant to go to callouts on smart motorways, they have to contact the motorway controller to put an 'X' above the lane ( LOL ), and even the Police with their flashing blue lights are hesitant to stop - so what chance does the average vehicle stand. IIRC when the inside lane is open to 'live running' LOL the speed limit on whole motorway section is reduced to 40... which is the very, very minimum you would expect. There is a parliamentary selct committee been looking at smart motorways for a while now, saw a meeting of it on TV, and TBH the MP's were giving the civil servants 'experts' from Dept of Transport a real hard time about the safety. By the time the Police / roadside services fine out about a breakdown and until they get there can be a good 30 mins or more. They tried using automatic Radar to detect stopped vehicles, it has never really worked, depends on weather, false echoes etc. I smart motorways are a cheap and nasty way to increase capacity. Many sections of M6 are raised so hard to widen them. My bro said years ago why didn't the motorway builders leave extra room on the 'inside' of motorways, which meant extra lanes could have been added without affecting bridges etc.
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