Reply With QuoteThe motorways are smart (by design) but operated by complete morons at Highways England - utter tossers, the lot of them.
I gather the sell is they improve traffic flow. Really? With no hard shoulder to accommodate breakdowns or shunts the inside lane has to be closed down, usually miles before the offending vehicle using the overhead gantry signs which I presume are controlled by monkeys as they seldom reflect reality anyway. I have lost count of the number of times I've passed signs displaying some invisible obstruction that fails to materialise coupled with the inevitable speed restriction that are monitored by the thought police happy to fine anyone exceeding them.
The M25 is the classic example but they are spreading like a bad rash. The M3 has had a 50mph speed restriction for about 14 miles west of the M25 for the last two years at least and sometimes I actually spot folk working on it too!
Love to see impartial stats to show they actually speed up traffic flow overall.
The motorways are smart (by design) but operated by complete morons at Highways England - utter tossers, the lot of them.
The M3 had better be capable of winning Mastermind and beating a Grandmaster (not to mention curing cancer and putting a man on the sun) with the amount of time it's taking...
M.
I know exactly what you're saying. Smart motorways seems to mean several years of chaos and disruption whilst they make them 'smart' e.g. the M1 which has had road works on it now for at least 3 years whilst they make it 'smart'. Then when they finally finished the work you end up with accidents and congestion due to changing the speed limit every few hundred yards! They spent absolutely years doing the M62 up near leeds, it was impossible to go from one side of the country to the other over the M62 without major delays because of the work. Now they've finished it but it's now still useless because of the aforementioned random speed changes which still seem to cause massive congestion and really peeve me off. I do wonder if the 'smart' element means 'install loads of revenue making speed cameras!'. As I've said before.... the M62 is now so bad that, as a far as I'm concerned, it's 'not fit for purpose' (well not if the purpose is as a high speed road). Any trips I do from one side to other I now do using the A59: It's quicker and no random speed limits (only 2 or 4 cameras and they're on the entrance/exit of a couple of villages so I have no issue with them) and the countryside's better and much lower stress levels.
I would counter this by saying that the M42 smart motorway to the East of Birmingham really does flow a lot better than it did before it was upgraded.
This is a good article on them: http://www.building.co.uk/infrastruc...080863.article
(better link: https://www.arcadis.com/media/F/B/F/...0Motorways.pdf)
The interim report presenting results from May 2014- April 2015 by Highways England found that the scheme is easing congestion and reducing journey times on the M25 with no adverse effect on safety. The Transport Select Committee launched an enquiry into the scheme in December 2015 to determine the impact of all lane running, to inform how future policy should evolve and to review the results found so far.
Traffic flows Journey times J5/-7 clockwise +13% -3% J5-7 anti-clockwise +3% -2% J23-27 +10% -7%
There was an improvement in traffic flows and journey times across both schemes, with the biggest improvements occurring in time periods that were previously congested. For example, on the J23-27 stretch average journey times during Monday to Thursday morning peaks anti-clockwise decreased by four minutes. Across both schemes the number of vehicle hours delay was reduced saving a total of 7,680 hours per day between the schemes.
Last edited by Phil Lee; 17th May 2017 at 12:21.
nothing is smart.
more complex - more problems
it'll end in tears
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
The problem is that although the Motorway is Smart, the majority of the drivers are not. If drivers actually drove to the laws/rules of the road, Smart Motorways would not be required.
And yet the Autobahns have some of the longest tailbacks of all...Originally Posted by chrisb
The one thing you can say about the M3 works is that the 50 MPH limit actually keeps the traffic flowing better when it's busy.
It's not so much people not driving to the laws/rules, simply that there's a concertina effect when people brake, so doing 50 in the rush hour reduces that, but doing 50 at 6 in the morning with no sign of a single workman for 20 miles is just bloody annoying...
So, MAYBE it'll be smarter if they ever finish, but it's been as dumb at Trump for the last 3 years... I notice, too, that the 'due for completion...' boards have vanished too..
M.
Maybe if they set the limit at 50 for longer stretches then it would be better (congestion wise that is). The problem I found with the M62 was just about every gantry the limit would change again!! You could go 70,50,60,50,40 etc... all within the space of a mile or so.
Not having hazard warning lights fitted on my car, I am terrified of breaking down on a non-hard-shoulder stretch of motorway.
Why not get one of those orange flashing beacons that you can plug into the cigarette lighter socket for emergencies
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
You'd like to think that they've done a reasonable amount of research into the effectiveness of smart motorways before spending millions and causing massive disruption in rolling them out.
Having said that, governments (of all flavours) have a history of making some pretty stupid decisions...
Not sure about "smart" simply because it has been proven that if they make the Motorway network better, then more cars will use it. Thus nullifying any short term gains.
That said, adding an extra lane by using the hardshoulder does make it a much cheaper option (in theory) and is a lot lest disruptive to those living near it.
On the topic of the M3 - mind blowing incompetence springs to mind. I can remember thinking that it might be ready in time for the Rugby World Cup (2015), yet progress remains as slow as some of the traffic jams between 07.00 and 09.00 (Junct 4-2).
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It'll never be truly smart til we stop using them. Elon Musk with his Boring Company is probably the correct vision for the future.
That's my point - they could, should and (sometimes) do work - but fail because of the cretins who operate them! 'Fog' signs on clear days and then HE moan that people ignore the warnings, change the hard shoulder to a useable lane then post 'congestion' signs.......but don't open the HS.................
Highways England isn't fit for purpose, but accountable to no-one it seems. Until it's replaced or overhauled, major roads will never work as well as they could.
The comment about driver competence above is also true!
I understand the thinking behind Smart motorways and I believe they will help if managed correctly. What I totally disagree with is the loss of the hard shoulder, typical of a safety decidion made by a comittee qhere no individual takes responsibility for the consequences. The prospect of a tyre failure or breakdown on these sections is scary, a low risk acenqrio gas now become downright dangerous.
The problem of ever-increasing traffic volumes has no obvious answer, certainly not an easy one. People have to accept that journey times are increasing, if they don't like it don't travel. Easier said than done, I know that, but maybe folks should think twice before taking jobs a long way from home or doing jobs that involve lots of travelling.
Paul
Indeed. I live in gridlock city and it is really frustrating because it is almost entirely due to motorists selfishly blocking junctions. Although there are yellow boxes, if you stop at one waiting for traffic to clear ahead it will be met with a barrage of beeping from behind and traffic from other lanes will fill the space ahead. Public Transport drivers are the worst offenders.
And there's no such thing as a hard shoulder even in places where that was the intention - it's just another lane (or two).
Traffic flows much better in places that have a more considerate culture when behind the wheel.
Last edited by Mr Curta; 17th May 2017 at 14:09. Reason: Strange glitch
I spend a lot of time driving in France and hate coming out of the tunnel to drive up North. The concept of the smart motorway is a good one but the implementation is appalling. In a mile you can have 3 different speed limits which makes driving exceptionally tiring. The frequency of the changes makes me think that they just exist for revenue generation.
It is incredibly frustrating to be driving at midnight with very light traffic and being held at 50 by a supposedly smart system.
If they really want to get traffic off the roads then they should make broadband properly fast and encourage businesses to relocate from London in to the provinces.
What cigarette lighter socket would that be?
Having said that, a corking idea and one that I will follow up. I can jury rig a wander lead I am sure. Many thanks.
+1000... 2 hour commute today!
There are different types of what are now called 'Smart Motorways'.
The original pilot on the M42 was called Active Traffic Management and utilised Dynamic Hard Shoulder Running.
The flows on the motorway are remotely monitored in the Regional Control Centre and when the system detects a certain level of traffic flow it flags this up. The control centre operators then have to visually scan the hard shoulder area using the huge amount of fixed CCTV cameras you can see in the verges to check it's clear of obstructions and then signals can be set to use the hard shoulder.
There are Emergency Refuge Areas at defined intervals along the DHS sections to allow vehicles in trouble to get to safety, each of which has to have an Emergency Roadside Telephone and be covered by CCTV.
Operators can set other warnings (such as 'vehicle exiting refuge area' or 'lane blocked ahead') on the variable Message Signs and close lanes accordingly using the signals on the overhead gantries.
The newer version of this converts the hard shoulder permanently to a running lane and is called (not-surprisingly) All Lane Running.
The infrastructure required to be installed is slightly different, as the hard shoulder does not need all those CCTV cameras (although full coverage is still required using PTZ CCTV), there are less superspan gantries, possibly more VMS and also now the central reserve has to have a Rigid Concrete Barrier. I understand (although I'm no expert) that the system on ALR can automatically set speed limits according to traffic flow. The operators in the RCC can still set signals to close lanes and show messages on the VMS.
There's another variant called 'Controlled Motorway' which has all the ALR type technology but retains the hard shoulder, so basically a variable speed limit section of standard motorway with some additional gantries and VMS.
Trust me (and as anyone who has ever dealt with Highways England and their Project Control Framework will attest to) there is an enormous amount of work put into looking at feasibility and operational concept of smart motorways schemes (including congestion reduction and cost benefit analysis) with an overriding emphasis on safety - as it should be.
Of course, with all of this there's still an element of human control, which from some of the comments above, may not always be spot on...
If anyone is feeling really bored, the design guide and concept of operations documents are freely available:-
http://www.standardsforhighways.co.u.../IAN161_15.pdf
http://www.standardsforhighways.co.u...tions_v3_0.pdf
At the end of the day, with rising traffic levels and widening motorways all over the place not being sustainable or even feasible in some lcoations (plus bloomin' expensive and very time consuming) Smart Motorways are an efficient way of adding capacity.
Oh, and as regards enforcement, the RCC has a local agreement with plod to enforce the reduced speed limits, but it's still up to plod to enforce the normal speed limit.
The only smart bit about them is the ability to catch a speeding motorist from one of the many overhead gantrys.
Long live the M61 and M6 north.
I'm all for it, if it works, and by controlling the speed on the motorway in the approaches to jams it should theoretically help ease congestion.
I used to commute up and down the M3 every day and the biggest issue by far was the weight of traffic in term time. Adding an extra exit slip road to each junction and making them much longer would help massively, as would attempting to get people out of their cars on the school run.
"A man of little significance"
It's not going to make much difference when the chronically sleep-deprived driver of a 44ton artic' ploughs through you while being felated by an underage hitchhiker and texting his wife...
Can't wait for self driving cars, once the majority of people use them there will be significantly less road deaths and traffic will flow much better. 2016 1,732 deaths on Uk roads and 22,137 seriously injured. Not letting people drive is worth saving all those lives and injuries at the very least let alone the better traffic flow.
Yep. Unfortunately, I think that smart motorways (or their not so smart users) are going to kill people.
I'm a petrolhead. I despise the prospect of self driving electric cars. However, when I think about actually trying to drive anywhere using a motorway I suddenly see the point. There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about motorway travel.
This^^^^^ major airports are in the South, best rail and road infrastructure in the South, infrastructure planning for the UK is poor at best, but then long term planning here is almost non existent.
I agree entirely. For the vast majority of journeys I would quite happily sit there working (or surfing TZ) whilst the car gets me there. I'd then have something ridiculous and fun for weekend fun drives.
I can't wait!
We already have electric cars that do this... they're called trains! ;-)
- without the public!
does not work much IMO, at least twice a month I see a *warning pedestrian in the road - 50 mph* warning sign but in all the times I have seen this I yet to see this mystical pedestrian, problem now is everyone just ignores the sign
Yes I saw one of those a few months ago on the A1... tbh most drivers seemed to be, as you say, ignoring it. SWMBO kept on saying there's a sign saying 50 but my reply was 'but everyone's doing 80!'. Never saw any pedestrian or evidence there ever was.
My point entirely - as per earlier wrt 'Fog' - I asked HE why and was told condensation settles on cobwebs over the sensors - OK, it's possible, but there's still incpmpetence in either whoever designed/signed-off of a system that doesn't work or some drone in a control room who simply hasn't noticed.
I drove many miles on the M25 with others in the LH lane as the gantries showed lanes 1 and 2 closed...................they weren't.
Cry wolf is very relevant.
The trouble with this is that you can guarantee if something happens and you have ignored the signs you are going to get absolutely shafted. Particularly if you hit someone.
Smart motorways are a huge accident waiting to happen. When a vehicle breaks down the gantries will indicate that the lane is closed - but what happens when the breakdown isn't detected? Like when the vehicle stops under a bridge, or when there is thick fog and the cameras can't penetrate the murk - or the morning when the distracted camera operator in the control room loses concentration for a minute?
The false indications, resulting in speed limits being applied when there is no obstruction, also creates congestion rather than easing it and I know of a stretch of M1 where they stick a 50mph limit on the road every weekday at 5.30am because they estimate that by 7.30am there will be a queue on the slip road and they want to be prepared. Idiotic!
But then again, a local stretch of minor road, which was pristine black asphalt that was put down less than 3 years ago, has just been "top dressed" with 19th Century tar and limestone chippings, resulting in many stone chips and several broken windscreens. At the same time, a short stretch of the road passing through a small town 4 miles away, hasn't been repaired in at least 15 years and, thanks to constant onslaught by disorganised utility companies, has all the appearance of a medieval cart track.
You're not wrong the best Smart Mercedes ever made.
But too complex and too many problems they axed it.
Michael
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Well regardless if the merits of the M3 being 'smart' I wish they would get on and finish the damn thing - talk about proceeding at a leisurely pace, they have been at it for years and there is a distinct lack of activity when you drive through the miles of road works. Where are the construction workers? Are they moving around from one 'smart motorway' in progress to another a bit like the builders that have 6 jobs on the go at one time resulting in everything taking much longer to complete?
I think they actually do most of the work at night when it's safer, at least that's how they did it back home where I am from. I agree though that stretch of motorway borders on inhuman and adversely affects your mental health whenever you have to go through it.
No hard shoulder has got to be a huge pile up waiting to happen!
I was on the m42 ( i think, so chaotic around there) and was surprised to see the lack of said hard shoulder. If a vehicle breaks down, and has to crawl over to the left, if it can, something is going to smash into it on a dark night in poor visibility before that lane can be closed. Also a " refuge area" is only useful if a vehicle can get there.... obviously.
We have some at Bristol, and they seem to be good, it's just idiot drivers that cause the issues as usual. As for breaking down, it's happened, but there's refuge areas every mile or so, which means you just dip in if you have a flat or whatever, if it's more serious, which i don't see happening too often and can't make the refuge, then the police are instantly called out and cover it as a priority i believe.
What would be smart is a car share app!
You drive the same route each day and the app monitors you then it links you with all other people who live within a certain radius of you and you can set the proximity to end location and margin of times travelled and maybe just maybe it would make car sharing a reality and reduce not only a load of traffic but save a few quid
RIAC
Have you ever used a computer? Or a gps? Why would anyone think that this combination will be better than cars driven by people, however crap they are. Won't happen in our lifetimes, and when it does it won't be on roads as we know them now.
Sent from my iPad using TZ-UK mobile app
Why wouldn't they be any better, Humans are the major contributing factor in almost every single car crash. If every single car is driverless you remove the reason for most crashes. Are you suggesting because your windows PC crashes your car is going to crash tooThe standard of reliability in a PC is totally different from something that lives depend on, just look at commercial aircraft autopilots the level of testing is much more exacting, I take you do fly and entrust your life to a computer while up there? There are billion dollar companies betting big money that it will happen in our life times too.
The 'Fog' signs on motorways have bugged me for years. If it's foggy, you generally can't read them. Because it's foggy. If you can read them, it's because nobody has switched them off when the fog cleared. I just don't see the point.
Dave E
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day
Having hit the traffic on the Bristol smart motorways, all i can say is that it does need more active policing, you go 60 as per the speed limits but you just get more idiots who undertake you all the way, making lane changes a hell of a lot riskier than normal, it just reiterates earlier points that the system is sound, unfortunately the users aren't.
Move to the left lane.................
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