Smart Motorways: What plans are there for the motorways around Bristol as MPs call for projects to be stopped

MPs have called for a pause to the roll out of smart motorways until issues over safety are addressed.

There are numerous projects to create smart motorways across the UK, including almost 30 miles of road on the M5 and M4 near to Bristol.

An eight-mile stretch of the M4 between junction 19 for the M32 at Bristol and junction 18 for Bath is planned, as well as a 20-mile stretch on the M5 from junction 17 at Cribbs Causeway and a new junction 21a near Weston-super-Mare.

The proposal is led by the West of England Combined Authority, which set it out in its Joint Local Transport Plan for 2020 to 2036.

There is already a smart motorway on both the M5 and M4 from the Almondsbury Interchange to junction 19 on the M4 and junction 17 on the M5.

A smart motorway is a section of a motorway that uses traffic management methods to increase capacity and reduce congestion in particularly busy areas.

These methods include using the hard shoulder as a running lane and using variable speed limits to control the flow of traffic.

However, concerns over their safety have been raised and yesterday, demonstrators carried 38 cardboard coffins to the Houses of Parliament in protest of the number of people who have been killed on smart motorways between 2014 and 2019.

Members of the House of Commons’ Transport Select Committee (TSC) have called on the Government to pause any further roll-outs until an independent review of at least five years’ data has been conducted.

The report said: “The Government and National Highways should pause the rollout of new all-lane running schemes until five years of safety and economic data is available for every all-lane running scheme introduced before 2020 and the implementation of the safety improvements in the Government’s action plan has been independently evaluated.”

“However, this evidence is also open to question. Only 29 miles of these all-lane running smart motorways have operated for over five years.

“It therefore feels too soon, and uncertain, to use this as an evidence base to remove the hard shoulder from swathes of our motorway network.”

The committee’s chairman, Huw Merriman,  said: “Looking at the available evidence, smart motorways do appear to be safer than conventional motorways even once the hard shoulder is removed.”