Tag: smart motorways

• An economic disaster

  Transport Action Network (TAN) has published its analysis of the 16 evaluation reports on smart motorway schemes that the government finally allowed National Highways to publish this month, concluding that as expected, they showed that almost all had been costly failures.

  Instead of delivering a predicted £10 billion of economic benefits, they delivered under £2bn, which is less than they cost to build. And that’s not counting the £900 million spent on retrofitting additional emergency laybys and upgrading technology.

  

  TAN notes that Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) studies are produced after a new scheme is built to assess whether it worked in terms of relieving congestion, improving safety, whether the environmental mitigation worked, and overall whether they provided value for money for taxpayers.

  It focuses on the 11 schemes with five-year studies and the most reliable data, finding that only two came anywhere near delivering their claimed benefits.

  The other nine were an economic disaster, costing the economy over £400m on (lack of) time savings, when National Highways had predicted over £7 billion of benefits. This is before counting the cost of building these nine ‘smart’ motorways, which comes in at a staggering £1.6 billion. This doesn’t include the £900 million that has been spent on retrofitting more emergency refuges and upgrading the technology across all ‘smart’ motorways. That means that these nine ‘smart’ motorways have cost the economy well over £2 billion.

  Looking across all 11 schemes, the economy lost over £500 million, showing how bad these motorways are financially, before any consideration of safety.

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  2026.02.23

• No winners in smart motorway death crash case

  Barry O’Sullivan has been found guilty of causing the death of Pulvinder Dhillon by careless driving on a smart motorway section of the M4 in 2022 but the verdict in no way lets National Highways off the hook and it is unarguable that the crash would not have happened if the “smart” technology had done its job.

  A jury sat through the trial and heard the evidence – plus the judge’s summing up – and decided that O’Sullivan was guilty so I won’t argue with them.

  But in this case it has always been possible to argue both that O’Sullivan was culpable despite National Highways’ shocking failings and that National Highways failed abysmally despite O’Sullivan’s culpability.

  

  I first wrote about the crash soon after it happened and was told by a senior National Highways official that the stopped vehicle detection (SVD) technology had worked as far as possible, except that a fault with the wider system meant that alerts were not posted on gantries.

  The M4 [incident] was a particular issue with some of our back office systems that were offline at the time – we’ve now corrected the system so that can’t happen. The scheme was still in operational acceptance so, as tragic as it was, this was a shortcoming of a system that [hadn’t yet] been handed into business as usual.

  What I didn’t know then was that this was the fifth day of this fault and that National Highways had failed to effect what turned out to be quite a quick fix because the fault was wrongly categorised.

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  2026.02.18

• Smart motorway death crash fault “assigned 7-day priority”

  As the trial of Barry O’Sullivan for allegedly causing the death of Pulvinder Dhillon by careless driving approaches its conclusion, the story gets worse for National Highways, whatever the verdict.

  ITV news reports that:

  An unresolved technical failure on the M4 smart motorway network meant alerts for broken-down vehicles were not properly communicated in the days leading up to a fatal collision, a court has heard.

  The technical malfunction on March 2 2022 was flagged by the system and automatically generated tickets, but they were assigned to the wrong National Highways team and with an incorrect priority level of “7-day resolution”, the court was further told.

  This meant the alert system had been malfunctioning for five days when Barry O’Sullivan, 45, crashed his grey Ford Transit Connect into the back of a Nissan Micra that had come to a halt in the fast lane of the motorway on March 7 2022.

  

  (more…)

  2026.02.17

• A disgraceful use of safety statistics

  The release of POPE evaluation reports on smart motorways has triggered a debate in the House of Lords, with a government spokesperson quoting a statistic about the high level of danger on A roads to suggest that smart motorways are safer by comparison.

  The debate began with Lord Harries of Pentregarth asking the government:

  what assessment they have made of the post opening project evaluations of smart motorways in relation to (1) safety, and (2) value for money.

  The initial answer from Baroness (Judith) Blake of Leeds, previously leader of Leeds City Council, appeared to be that the government had made no assessment in relation to value for money:

  While National Highways reports show that smart motorways are meeting or exceeding safety objectives in all but one upgrade, we know that people need to feel safe as well as be safe. That is why National Highways invested some £900 million to improve safety and educate drivers. The reports show that these upgrades have added vital capacity to some of the country’s busiest roads and are largely on course to meet their environmental goals.

  

  Given that most smart motorways were literally a way of adding capacity to motorways by using the hard shoulder as a running lane, it’s a bit desperate to say the POPE reports show that they had done this.

  But Lord Harries tried again on the value for money point:

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  2026.02.16

• Hostage to fortune released with POPEs

  The latest issue of Local Transport Today (LTT) also has my take on the departure (or defenestration) of National Highways chief executive Nick Harris.

  

  There has been a lot of speculation about why Harris supposedly chose this moment to depart, including the variable speed cameras fiasco.

  At the time that LTT went to press last week, the Department for Transport was still preventing National Highways publishing what turned out to be 16 Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports on smart motorways.

  Aware that it was a bit of a hostage to fortune if the reports turned out to be a damp squib, I wrote:

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  2026.02.11

• AA pushes back against “attempt to bury bad news”

  The AA has published its analysis of 16 previously suppressed Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports on smart motorways, pointing out that many are losing the economy money, while their safety record is at best mixed, with some becoming more dangerous after the hard shoulder is removed.

  The motoring group has been careful to distinguish between the different types of motorway given so-called “smart” technology ­– controlled motorways, which keep the hard shoulder; dynamic hard shoulder (DHS), where the hard shoulder can be used as a running lane at during periods of high congestion; and all lane running (ALR), where the hard shoulder is permanently converted into a running lane.

  

  It points out that two schemes – the M25 ALR section between junctions 23 to 27, and the M6 DHS section between junctions 5 to 8 – are losing the economy money and have been rated “very poor” value for money.

  A further six schemes have been rated as “not on track – poor” or “not on track – low” in respect of providing value money at the end of the evaluation period once the motorway has been opened to traffic.

  The AA points out that in many cases, converting the hard shoulder into a permanent or temporary running lane has reduced the speed of traffic.

  Just three schemes were “on track” in relation to value for money at the end of the five-year evaluation period.

  The AA noted that many of the reports are dated September 2023, despite many completing their evaluation period between 2017 and 2019.

  President Edmund King said:

  After a lengthy wait, these reports finally see the light of day. The reluctant release of these documents, without any announcement feels like an attempt to bury bad news.

  This has been a catastrophic waste of time, money and effort. Many of the schemes have slower journeys which causes traffic jams, loses the country cash and worsened the safety record of motorways.

  (more…)

  2026.02.06

• Popes released: Poor value, high casualties

  National Highways buried increases in fatalities from a new smart motorway by comparing a five-year period before the scheme opened with a three-year period afterwards.

  The company has finally released a huge batch of Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports that the Department for Transport (DfT) has prevented it publishing, some going back many years.

  They show a mixed picture for safety across a variety of all lane running (ALR), dynamic hard shoulder and controlled motorways, and that some schemes worsened journey times to the point where they provide “very poor” value for money, on top of the huge disruption involved in building them.

  The POPE report for the M1 junctions 19 to 16 ALR scheme, which opened in 2018 after the hard shoulder had been converted to a permanent running lane, claimed that::

  The number of fatal collisions has not changed with a total of four before and after the project became operational.

  However, in the three years before the scheme opened, there were three fatalities, meaning that fatalities had increased by 33%.

  

  The report did the same for fatalities recorded in the wider area around the scheme. It stated:

  After the project was constructed, we have observed a decrease in collisions resulting in fatalities (the total before the project was 34, compared to 24 after).

  In fact, the figure of 24 comes from the three years after opening and during the thee years before construction started there were 16 fatalities, representing a 50% increase. The figure of 24 fatalities over three years represents an annual average of eight, and would be 40 over five years.

  In addition, the last of these years, running to 28 January 2021, was a year of significantly lower traffic levels due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

  The POPEs also include a mixture of killed and seriously injured crashes (KSIs – the measure against which National Highways was measured over the 2020-25 roads period) and other measures, such as fatality weighted injuries.

  Among POPE reports showing a KSI total is the M3 Junctions 2-4a ALR scheme, which opened in 2017 and showed an increase of around a third in both the overall number of KSIs and the number per hundred vehicle miles, which measures KSIs compared to traffic levels.

  The five-year POPE report for the M1 junctions 39 to 42 ALR project shows that the scheme led to an increase in KSI casualties but offered ‘poor’ value for money because predicted journey time savings used to justify the scheme did not materialise.

  The appraisal forecast a significant traffic growth and improving journey times; the observed data suggested a more modest traffic growth accompanied by slightly slower journey times in most time periods and considerably slower average journey times in the northbound morning peak.

  The M1 report covers a period from 2018 to 2021 and has a foreword from National Highways’ chief customer and strategy officer, Elliot Shaw, dated September 2024.

  The five-year pope for the M3 scheme is dated September 2025 while other reports have forewords dated September 2023, despite the DfT claiming that it was carrying out “assurance”.

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  2026.02.05

• Come clean on smart motorways, TAN tells DfT

  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:

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  2026.02.04

• Crash death trial highlights smart motorway failings

  We will all have to be careful what we say about the ongoing criminal trial of Barry O’Sullivan, accused of causing the death of Pulvinder Dhillon by careless driving on the M4 in March 2022, but the overriding message that the public will see is that the technology on this stretch of smart motorway had not been working for some time at the time of the crash.

  The Daily Mail reports:

  A grandmother killed in a crash could still be alive today if safety technology on the smart motorway she broke down on hadn’t been ‘dangerously defective’, a court heard.

  

  This is the defence case. The prosecution case is that O’Sullivan was nevertheless responsible and the jury will hear the evidence and make up its mind.

  The main theme that the papers are focusing on – that the system to detect stopped vehicles in live lanes and warn other drivers about them was not working – has been known for some time.

  In fact, in May 2022, National Highways’ executive director for operations, Duncan Smith told me that the crash had occurred after the system had detected a stopped vehicle but an error had prevented an alert being raised.

  Pointing out that the vehicle had stopped in lane 4, Mr Smith said: ‘The M4 [incident] was a particular issue with some of our back office systems that were offline at the time – we’ve now corrected the system so that can’t happen. The scheme was still in operational acceptance so, as tragic as it was, this was a shortcoming of a system that [hadn’t yet] been handed into business as usual.’

  (more…)

  2026.02.03

• DfT smart motorway cover-up not working

  The AA has reported a sharp rise in the number of drivers who feel nervous or anxious when using smart motorways and called for “greater transparency and consistency in how motorway safety is assessed, monitored and communicated”, including the release of the evaluation reports that ministers are suppressing

  

  It said its survey of 12,705 drivers shows that the proportion reporting feelings of nervousness or anxiety on all lane running “smart” motorways with no hard shoulder doubled from 23% last year to 46% this year.
  
  Dynamic hard shoulder “smart” motorways where the hard shoulder is only opened to traffic during busy periods, also saw a significant increase in anxiety, with the number of drivers feeling nervous or anxious rising from 30% to 47% in 12 months.

  AA president Edmund King said:

  It’s not surprising that our members are more anxious about using ‘smart’ motorways. If you break down in a live lane, in effect, you are a sitting duck. The failure of ‘smart’ motorway technology over the last few years has, no doubt, added to the levels of anxiety.

  What the AA and our members would like to see is the return of the hard shoulder in a controlled motorway environment. Until that concern is properly addressed, it’s hard to see confidence in ‘smart’ motorways recovering.

  The AA said the findings underline the need for greater transparency and consistency over smart motorways, pointing out that a number of Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports looking at the safety and economic benefits of several stretches of ‘smart’ motorway have been awaiting publication for years.

  It said these should be released urgently.

  King added:

  These safety reports are vital in understanding how the smart motorways experiment has fared. By continuously delaying their release, it is feared that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Regardless of what these documents say, they need to be published immediately.

  Especially as hiding the truth is clearly not helping the public’s confidence.

  2026.02.03