Smart Motorways

[Zonda_]

Yep. Good riddance.

https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunak ... t-12858118

[jamcg]

Fucking dumb from the start. It’s like the person who had the idea had never drove on a motorway

[Mito Man]

Yay. Can they bin the gantry cameras too

[nuttinnew]

I'm sure it'll be the wrong decision and end up costing more, as sure as I am that people will think this means the scrapping of all smart motorways already in existence.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Good decision. if only they'd bin the existing ones as well.

The cheapest way of saving face would simply be to keep the dynamic speed control and reinstate the hard shoulders. Minimal cost as it's just reinstating a solid line (sort of).

[Simon]

Yeah, it's not as simple as that though. Where the M25 clockwise joins the M3 southbound the junction lane joins the M3 where the old hard shoulder was and becomes the left lane. You'd lose a lot of junction space if you reinstated the HS.

I'm sure that's not the only example.

[Jobbo]

There were always a few places on the motorway network without a hard shoulder before - they were the exception, but it wouldn't be a big leap to retain the merge area without a hard shoulder. Of more interest is how they will then drop a lane when the carriageway reverts to having a hard shoulder.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Yeah, it's not as simple as that though. Where the M25 clockwise joins the M3 southbound the junction lane joins the M3 where the hold hard shoulder was and becomes the left lane. You'd lose a lot of junction space if you reinstated the HS.

I'm sure that's not the only example.

It would just merge in further on. You'd just have a relatively short section without hard shoulder.

[Jobbo]

Really good article here about the future of Smart Motorways: https://www.roads.org.uk/blog/not-so-smart

TLDR version: the cancellation of Smart Motorways only relates to future projects. Existing Smart Motorways are not going to be re-lined to have a hard shoulder again. The best we can hope for, it appears, is more CCTV, more Stopped Vehicle Detection and more refuge lay-bys to be installed on them.

I learnt something else from the article; it appears the vague 'Report of Obstruction' messages on the smart signs are automatically triggered by Stopped Vehicle Detection. Since they're so undescriptive, I assumed they were manually triggered after someone calls in an object which is in a live lane; I think 'Report of Stopped Vehicle' or similar would be far more useful.