Department for Transport

Shapps: Smart motorways to be altered

Grant Shapps announces changes to smart motorways
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps says the government will make some changes to the way smart motorways are run.

Live hard shoulders scrapped on smart motorways

Smart motorway
Gov.UK

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has released an 18-point package of measures to improve safety on smart motorways. Smart motorways were introduced in 2006 and use various methods to manage the flow of traffic, including variable speed limits and using the hard shoulder as a live running lane.

But now the Department for Transport has said it will remove hard shoulders completely and replace them with refuge areas on smart motorways.

Mr Shapps,said he had been "greatly concerned by a number of deaths on smart motorways, and moved by the accounts of families who’ve lost loved ones in these tragic incidents".

He commissioned a review of the system which found that in "most ways smart motorways are as safe as, or safer than conventional ones", the Department for Transport said.

"However, some risks are higher than on conventional motorways, for example the risk of a collision between a moving and stationary vehicle."

The new measures will see the “dynamic hard shoulder” motorways abolished to end confusion, it added.

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