Transport Insights

Ministers are sitting on a huge amount of data on the safety and value for money of smart motorway schemes, including at least nine that were due for completion in 2022.

The concealment of multiple post opening project evaluation (POPE) reports will raise concerns that the government is once again hiding inconvenient facts about the controversial roads, as it did in 2021, when I put pressure on the Department for Transport (DfT) over reports that it was suppressing.

When the five-years after POPE on the scheme to convert the M1 between junctions 10 and 13 to dynamic hard shoulder was published in September 2021, it revealed that it had cost the economy £200m instead of a projected benefit of £1bn, because it slowed traffic down. It made national news.

In its Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance 2021-22, regulator the Office of Rail and Road stated:

We are scrutinising the company’s POPE publication plan for smart motorway schemes. Nine of these are due to be completed in 2022. In July 2021, the company published the five-year POPE for the M1 junctions 10 to 13 dynamic hard shoulder running scheme.

That POPE was the last report on a smart motorway to be published, which is unsurprising given how terrible the data was, although aggregated safety data is published separately.

When I asked National Highways why no more POPE reports had been published, a spokesperson told me:

We have provided the Department for Transport (DfT) with the smart motorway post opening project evaluation (POPE) reports. These are multiple detailed evaluations of scheme performance and DfT is now in the process of undertaking its final assurance.

Obviously, for those reports completed in 2022, “undertaking final assurance” means locked in a cupboard.

Despite claiming to scrutinise National Highways over it POPE programme, the ORR also made itself complicit in the decision to bury the reports. It said nothing in subsequent reports about what it did to follow up the issue and, if so, what it found out. It is however clear that it knew that the DfT was supressing the reports but as usual, it failed to tell the public or MPs, who are the official recipients of its annual assessment reports.

A spokesperson told me:

Based on National Highways’ reporting to us, we are content that it has authored the smart motorway POPEs that it programmed. However, these must be approved by the Department/Ministers prior to publication.

In fact, as I learned four years ago, National Highways does not need clearance from the DfT to publish its own POPEs, but they can be called in by ministers. Given the length of the delay, it appears that this was first done by a Conservative minister, although Labour ministers could obviously have cleared the reports for release any time the election last July.

I have been told many times by National Highways that the DfT insists that anything about the massively controversial smart motorways has to be cleared with it first.

Both National Highways and the ORR referred my enquiries about the suppressed reports to the DfT but the department has not responded to my requests for comment. 

On Wednesday I revealed that the last government secretly shelved a smart motorway scheme on value for money grounds, before pausing and then cancelling the whole programme to add more all lane running sections to the motorway network.

In addition to value for money issues, the government will obviously be keen to avoid any new controversy over the safety of smart motorways, for example if individual schemes have been found to have a poor safety record. Labour has not said it will restore the hard shoulder on smart motorways or fund additional safety measures, such as new emergency refuge areas.

In 2020 I revealed that what was then the only published five-year POPE of a smart motorway suggested that such schemes may become more dangerous in the long-term as extra space is taken up by increased traffic.

The reports that the government is now holding back may prove – or disprove – this possibility.