Smart Motorways A Waste Of Money

[10ClarionSt]

The AA says that smart motorways are a waste of money. The M60 in Greater Manchester has had "Upgrading work" going on since July 2014. It was scheduled to finish in July 2017 but has been put back to December 2017. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets put back further. In the three years since the "work" started, all I have seen are three new gantries, lots of barriers along the hard shoulder and lane narrowing. Just what they have been doing in the last three years is mystifying. You can rarely travel on the northern stretch of the M60 without encountering tailbacks. I just don't know what this so-called "upgrading" is going to achieve. Any ideas anyone?

[fiction-factory]

I think it's worth a try, unless it's already been tried and shown to be a failure

[mikey4444]

10C....I am not sure what is going on oop north, but it could be to provide variable max speeds.

This seems to have worked on the M4 in South Wales, and the last time I was on the anti-clockwise section of the M25, between the Airports, its seemed to work there as well.

[bhg481]

Smart motorways allow the (heavily monitored) hard shoulder to be used as a running lane in times of heavy traffic. Already in use around Birmingham and other stretches of the M6. M3 has had a large stretch recently opened and the M4 from Reading towards London is about to be done.
Lots of fear of major accidents but the stretched I've used seem to work very well.

[TWR]

Serious accidents waiting to happen, & to the doubters, it will.

[mikey4444]

Much has been debated about the use of the hard shoulder as a working lane, here on AB, but I still think its an accident waiting to happen. None of the Motorways that I use often have this in place, and thank goodness they don't !

[TWR]

How many times have you seen the impatient driver flying up the inside of you using he hard shoulder Mikey, we have all seen these clowns & I've also seen them plough into the back of a broken down vehicle as well, but there we go.

[Old_Geezer]

So, not only did it seem to be a bad idea when suggested, the AA has evidence it's even got issues just being created/maintained. Was common sense that penny pinching, using tech for the sake of it, is something to avoid. If a road needs an extra lane, provide it, or ensure alternative viable routes.

[ToraToraTora]

not only is it a waste of money, they are bleedin dangerous in my opinion and will only allow more traffic until they clog up. We need another way to address the problem, we should tackle the elephant in the room as it were.

[Hopkirk]

BHG, that was the original idea - a heavily monitored hard shoulder put to use when needed.

It works well.

Unfortunately we now have the cheap version. No hard shoulder at all. The situation is monitored, but not so heavily.

Personally I think this is a step too far. When something happens they cannot switch off hard shoulder use, just put messages up to not use particular lanes.
You can see there are less cameras than earlier versions such as Birmingham's M42, so a car breaking down in lane 1 is very vulnerable.