National Highways has so far added just 13 more emergency areas (EAs) to all lane running smart motorways since last year but says it is ‘confident’ that it will meet its commitment to add a total of 150 by 2025.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak announced this week that no new all lane running (ALR) schemes, where the hard shoulder becomes a running lane, would be built but existing schemes will remain in operation.
However many miles of all lane running remain in place, with no apparent plans to reinstate the hard shoulders. Emergency areas are designed to provide safe places to stop for those breaking down on such all lane running routes.
It was announced last year that planned schemes would be paused pending five years of safety data, in response to a recommendation by the Transport Select Committee. At the same time, ministers announced that £390m would be spent by 2025 to add 150 new EAs to existing schemes and those in construction.
The issue was discussed at a recent meeting of the transport select committee, where transport secretary Mark Harper told MPs that emergency areas on smart motorways ‘will be at a frequency of every three quarters of a mile’ – a departure from the policy of counting other ‘places of relative safety’ towards the spacing standard.
National Highways has told Highways that it has so far added five EAs on the M6 between junctions 13-15 in Staffordshire and a further eight to the M1 in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire between junctions 13-16, all of which are now available for use.
It will next retrofit more than 40 additional emergency areas on the M1 in Yorkshire as well as on the M25 in Hertfordshire and Essex.
A spokesperson said: ‘The emergency area retrofit programme was announced just over a year ago and National Highways has already made great strides towards delivering on this commitment, which will further improve public confidence in driving on our motorways.
‘In total, the programme will add around 150 more emergency areas to all lane running motorways already in operation. This will see nearly 50% more emergency areas across the all lane running network by 2025 compared with January 2022 and we are confident that this commitment will be met.’
RIS 3 is also due to see an EA roll out fund. Last summer transport minister Baroness Vere said that it could include 'a couple of hundred more'.
The confusion over spacing
In a 2021 report on smart motorways, the transport committee said National Highways should 'retrofit emergency refuge areas to existing all-lane running motorways to make them a maximum of 1 mile apart, decreasing to every 0.75 miles where physically possible'.
Although the Department for Transport said last year that it agreed to this recommendation ‘in principle’, it subsequently emerged that the Government and National Highways are working towards implementation of the company’s spacing standard for new schemes, which included other ‘places of relative safety’.
National Highways chief executive Nick Harris told MPs in July that while the spacing standard to which the company is working ‘does refer to places of relative safety’ the 150 new places to stop ‘are all emergency areas, all painted orange and set off to the side of the carriageway’.
Greg Smith MP asked: ‘Would it not be better to have a very uniform set of emergency areas—the three-quarters of a mile spacing—where it is very clear what someone can and cannot do in them?’
Appearing before the committee on Wednesday, Mr Harper stated that the Government was increasing the number of emergency areas and, apparently incorrectly, ‘those will be at a frequency of every three quarters of a mile’.
Mr Smith asked why the Government did not simply reinstate the hard shoulder on existing schemes, possibly by simply turning on red X signs in lane one.
The transport secretary argued that this would either require significant investment to replace the lost capacity, or see increased congestion.
He also stressed that the Government and National Highways are continuing to improve the safety of existing schemes, including the government-owned company ‘aiming’ to bring its stopped vehicle detection schemes up to the required performance levels by the end of June.
Mr Smith told Highways: ‘The distance between emergency areas is vitally important, albeit only for those vehicles who can travel an additional half or three quarters of a mile from the point of their breakdown.
‘A car out of fuel or with empty batteries, or blown tyre, simply can’t and must stop there and then. I accept the hard shoulder is not a safe place, but it’s safer than a running lane and should be reinstated everywhere.’
