Reports are circulating that the smart motorway programme is quietly being cancelled for good, with contractors apparently told not to expect further work.
Ministers paused the rollout of new schemes last year pending a review of safety data, following a recommendation by the Transport Select Committee. However now rumours are emerging from contractors that the programme is effectively over.
The i newspaper said senior industry sources involved in the programme have been told that it is to be scaled back significantly and contractors have been made aware of the impending changes.
One contractor told the newspaper that they had been told future schemes would be abandoned. The contractor said: ‘We’re no longer expecting any new smart motorways. Financial pressure on the Government, alongside the unpopularity of the scheme, makes it seem untenable going forward.’
Quoting government insiders, the i said an update on the future of smart motorways will be set out shortly.
It added that multiple sources in the Department for Transport said there was no immediate prospect of the programme being restarted but insisted that a final decision had not yet been made.
The RAC’s head of roads policy, Nicholas Lyes, said: ‘If ministers are giving serious consideration to completely scrapping new all-lane-running smart motorways, then this is an admission that the Government no longer has faith in these types of roads, a conclusion that most drivers came to a long time ago.
‘The next big question is: what happens to the hundreds of miles of motorway without a hard shoulder? It’s clear from RAC research that drivers want the hard shoulder back, so it may be the case that solid white lines have to be painted to all the inside lanes of these motorways.
‘While overall capacity would be dramatically reduced, we would still have the benefit of all the installed technology, such as variable speed limits which help to manage traffic flow more efficiently.’
Separately a coroner has said that a crash on an all lane running section of the M1 that killed two men would not have happened if there had been a hard shoulder.
Derek Jacobs stopped on the inside lane after a tyre on his van burst and was killed when a car hit the van. Charles Scripps, a passenger in the car, died in hospital two months later.
Assistant coroner Susan Evans is reported to have said: ‘It is immediately apparent that, had there been a hard shoulder, this incident would not have occurred because Mr Jacobs would have been able to pull off the live lane entirely.’
She added: ‘That said, there are many roads in the road network, including dual carriageway A-roads, that are subject to the national speed limit and do not have the benefit of any hard shoulder.’
