Demand for transparency on Smart Motorways

As campaigners call for POPES to be freed on Bonfire Night

Smart Motorways are widely seen to have been a failure. Deeply unpopular with road users and breakdown services, they have led to more live lane injuries and fatalities. As a result, in 2023, the further rollout of new schemes was cancelled by the then Conservative government. However, now the new Labour government is covering up the data which shows if the existing Smart Motorways produced the benefits they were meant to. The question is why?

First introduced in 2006, Smart Motorways involve converting the hard shoulder into a running lane, leaving motorists with nowhere to go if they break down. They were seen as ‘motorway widening on the cheap’, gaining extra capacity but without the expense of widening the footprint of the motorway. However, in removing a key safety feature on motorways – the hard shoulder – Smart Motorways have led to some tragic fatalities, robbing families of loved ones.

Claire Mercer founded Smart Motorways Kill after her husband Jason was needlessly killed on a Smart Motorway in 2019. She has campaigned relentlessly ever since, leading to the government banning new Smart Motorways in 2023. The AA and RAC have also raised concerns for the safety of their staff attending callouts to broken down vehicles on Smart Motorways.

However, the Government is still building new Smart Motorways and hoping no one will notice. The Lower Thames Crossing is a Smart Motorway in all but name. It is 3-lanes each way, built to motorway standard but with no hard shoulder, and with the technology used by Smart Motorways. The newly approved M60 Simister Island scheme in Greater Manchester is also being built with no hard shoulder, making it a Smart Motorway in all but name.

Although Smart Motorways are widely perceived to be more dangerous, National Highways dispute this, claiming Smart Motorways have a better safety track record than standard motorways with a hard shoulder. This is primarily because of all the technology (radar to detect stopped vehicles, variable speed limits and lane controls) that Smart Motorways are built with. If that was applied to a traditional motorway, it, in all likelihood, would be safer than a Smart Motorway. However, on Smart Motorways if you break down in a live lane you are much more likely to be injured or killed than on a standard motorway. That’s because if you suffer a sudden failure and don’t happen to be alongside an emergency refuge, you have nowhere to go, and if the technology doesn’t detect you and close the lane to traffic then you can be a sitting duck.

The best way to assess whether or not Smart Motorways make sense is for National Highways and the DfT to be completely transparent about the data. Unfortunately they have a track record of being less than open with information that doesn’t support their agenda.

Every time a new road project is completed, Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports are written after one and then after five years. They look at whether a scheme fulfilled its objectives to ease congestion and increase safety and provided value for money. However, transport journalist Chris Ames has discovered that the DfT is sitting on nine POPE studies for Smart Motorway schemes. They were completed in 2022, but have not been published. The last POPE study to be released for a Smart Motorway was in 2021, for the M1 Junction 10-13 in Bedfordshire. It revealed the project had actually cost the economy £200 million, rather than providing the projected £1 billion benefits used to justify the scheme. Perhaps the nine outstanding reports are equally as embarrassing, and this is why they have been kept from the public?

On Wednesday 5 November (the day of Bonfire Night), Claire Mercer of Smart Motorways Kill teamed up with journalist Chris Ames to hold a demonstration outside the DfT to demand the nine long overdue POPE studies are finally released. We need transparency from the government about Smart Motorways and the longer the government delays these reports, the more people will think it has something to hide. Smart Motorways are already shown to be more dangerous for live lane stoppages, but if their failings go further then it’s surely time to reverse the failed Smart Motorways experiment and reinstate the hard shoulder.

Our previous articles and work on Smart Motorways:
Un-SMART Motorways, January 2020
Shapps fails to halt killer motorways, February 2021
TAN’s evidence to the Transport Committee’s inquiry on Smart Motorways, April 2021
‘Smart’ Motorways need proper scrutiny, May 2021
TAN’s statement on Smart Motorways announcement, January 2022
Rethinking ‘Smart’ Motorways, February 2022
Letter to Roads Minister Baroness Vere, February 2022