[Abernathy]

AKA: when a country's motorway system desperately needs increased capacity, but that country is unable to make the necessary funding available actually to upgrade the motorway infrastructure thanks to its gross incompetence and fiscal mismanagement, so instead invents a cut-price "solution" that entails turning the hard shoulder safe areas on existing motorways into extra live running lanes, replacing the hard shoulders with a few "refuge areas" every mile and a half or so, calling the whole scheme "smart motorways", running a fatuously absurd advertising campaign using the slogan "Go Left", and directly and deliberately risking the lives of hundreds of motorway users.

Just another little thing from the 12 year old Tory government that has turned literally everything to shite.

[Abernathy]

Nobody seemed to be interested when I kicked off this thread just before Xmas, but there would appear to have been a development of sorts :

Rishi Sunak scraps plans for new smart motorways in England

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023 ... RZzljEMZKE

[Malcolm Armsteen]

No plans to abolish the existing ones, I gather, on which stranded motorists die like hedgehogs on a summer's night...

[Abernathy]

No plans to abolish the existing ones, I gather, on which stranded motorists die like hedgehogs on a summer's night...

Exactement, mon brave. Just another little bogus tweak to try and make this skip-fire of a government look slightly less fucking awful in the hope of avoiding a totally off-the-scale twatting in 18 months' time.

Every little helps, as Tommy Tesco is wont to opine.

[Andy McDandy]

In their favour, I do prefer cruising around the top of Birmingham at a steady 50 to stopping and starting at every junction.

File under "good concept, crap execution".

[RandomElement]

In their favour, I do prefer cruising around the top of Birmingham at a steady 50 to stopping and starting at every junction.

File under "good concept, crap execution".

I agree; the original ones where the hard shoulder is used when there are high traffic volumes with slower speeds are a lot better. But the more recent ones will all lane running at 70mph and just refuges are bad.