using hard shoulder as 4th lane

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Thu 16 Aug 2007 20:19
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - milkyjoe
it was supposed that the m1 would have 4 lane expansion between leicester and chesterfield , now the powers that be realise its a bit too expensive so they are planning on using the hard shoulder instead as an alternative , whats going on ? good idea or not?
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Thu 16 Aug 2007 21:08
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - Ruperts Trooper
The M42 on the east side of Birmingham has a traffic management system installed which varies the speed limit and brings the hard shoulder into use during busy periods. There are additional emergency refuges for broken down vehicles, if they can get there.

I've not used it in peak periods but it works fine at other times.

I think it relies on constant cctv monitoring to be workable.
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Thu 16 Aug 2007 21:25
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - Bromptonaut
I'd be very dubious about such a scheme over the long stretch of arterial motorway from Leicester to Chesterfield. Works OK on the M42 but that's more of an interurban link working with the M5 and original M6 as Brum's orbital motorway.
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Thu 16 Aug 2007 22:18
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - daveyjp
I've been on the M42 when the hardshoulder is being used, but very few use it as it is predominantly used as an extended slip road for the junctions. You have to move back to the inside lane if you aren't leaving the motorway, so most motorists stay on the main carriageway as the signs ask you not to change lanes in busy periods. There was no point using it to pass traffic on the inside either as the variable speed was in operation and all lanes were doing 50mph.
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Fri 17 Aug 2007 01:04
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - NowWheels
Why do English road-builders have such a deep aversion to hard shoulders that they are now talking of getting rid of them on roads which will, if this is done, have 4 lanes?

In Ireland, even the N-roads have hard shoulders, but they are a rarity on English A-roads, and their absence always seems to me to be a big reduction in safety.

When Saint Tony was canonised into No 10, the mantra was to do "what works", but I'd be very surprised if there is substantive research to justify hard-shoulderless multi-lane roads as "safe". I suspect that the logic used to justify this is some of the DfT's notoriously flaky cost-benefit analysis, something along the lines of "OK, we'll have have two fatalities a year, which we cost at £1million each, but we'll saving 150,000 person-hours of journey time at £20 per hour, so it's better value to get rid of the hard shoulders".
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Fri 17 Aug 2007 10:33
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - Ruperts Trooper
In relation to the size of population, there's plenty of room to add extra lanes to roads in Ireland.

We all know that our busy motorways should be 4-lane + hardshoulder but we haven't got the room in the over-crowded parts of England.

We could solve our road congestion problems by reducing our population - stop immigration, reduce the birth rate, encourage emigration - but we don't hear any politicians advocation this!
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Fri 17 Aug 2007 10:36
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - boxsterboy
Of course you could argue that the hard shoulder is statistically the most dangerous lane on motorways and that this proposal will therefore solve that. Not that I agree. Short-termism in the extreme and as pointed out above, we should be providing hard shoulders for A-roads, not taking them away from motorways.
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Fri 17 Aug 2007 13:56
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - NowWheels
In relation to the size of population there's plenty of room to add extra lanes
to roads in Ireland.
We all know that our busy motorways should be 4-lane + hardshoulder but we haven't
got the room in the over-crowded parts of England.


That argument might make sense if the hard shoulders were absent only in the South-East, but they ain't. I know are plenty of A-roads in the underpopulated parts of Wales and of North Yorkshire which also lack hard shoulders.
We could solve our road congestion problems by reducing our population - stop immigration reduce
the birth rate encourage emigration - but we don't hear any politicians advocation this!


Nah, they're doing the last bit by stealth. ID cards, endless CCTV surveillance cameras, ANPR cameras, DNA databanks, the whole-life records on children, the nationalised medical records database etc are all part of the grand cunning scheme to drive out anyone who cares about their civil liberties. They just don't want to admit what the plan is ;)
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Fri 17 Aug 2007 23:15
using hard shoulder as 4th lane - NowWheels
He passed to the left of the cars already on the dirt effectively creating a fifth lane.


And how do the accident rates in Thailand compare with those in the UK?
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