Transport Insights

Campaign group Transport Action Network (TAN) is adding to the pressure on the Department for Transport (DfT) to “come clean” over smart motorways, accusing it of misleading the public by claiming that none are being built, and calling on DfT ministers to release the evaluation reports that they have been sitting on.

The campaign group says the DfT is expected to publish 14 Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports about individual schemes at the end of this week and that their suppression until now suggests that they show that the schemes have been a waste of money.

But it also notes that this has been a bad week for smart motorways, with polling by the AA showing that the number of people who feel unsafe on smart motorways is increasing and the criminal trial of a driver for causing death by careless driving in circumstances where smart motorway technology had entirely failed.

TAN points out that although the DfT maintains that no more smart motorways are being built, the Lower Thames Crossing is a smart motorway in all but name, as it has three lanes, with no hard shoulder, is only open to the same vehicle classes as a motorway, and uses the same (unreliable) technology as smart motorways.

It adds that the recently approved M60 Simister Island scheme also has no hard shoulder included in the design.

TAN director Chris Todd said:

It is simply untrue that no more motorways without hard shoulders are being built. The Lower Thames Crossing is a smart motorway in all but name, having no hard shoulder to provide a safe place to stop in case of breakdowns. As the saying goes, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. To keep denying it is a ‘smart’ motorway looks increasingly untenable. 

The department and ministers need to stop taking the public for fools and get a grip with the whole smart motorway debacle. It’s time they were scrapped and the hard shoulders restored.

I have been working with TAN in the possibly misguided hope or expectation that the DfT could allow National Highways to publish all 14 POPE reports as early as tomorrow, if ministers don’t again lose their nerve, as they did before Christmas when the latest smart motorway scandal – over faulty variable speed enforcement cameras – hit the headlines.