No unique neat motorways will seemingly be built until a elephantine diagnosis of their safety has been applied, the authorities launched this morning.
The Department for Transport has taken on the ideas of a file issued in November that suggested more data on the safety of all-lane-working motorways could just silent be mild earlier than future schemes launch. No unique initiatives will beginning up until a elephantine five years of safety data for all neat motorways completed earlier than 2020 is readily available. This data will then be assessed and the manner forward for the programme will seemingly be determined by the authorities.
Invent work on deliberate schemes will continue, however no preparatory construction work for them will seemingly be allowed.
Orderly motorway schemes for the time being under construction will seemingly be allowed to continue. The DfT acknowledged all such schemes are greater than 50 per cent entire and it’d be too disruptive to stop them.
The DfT has additionally pledged to exhaust £390m on installing 150 further emergency refuge areas on existing neat motorways. This could just result in round 50 per cent more safety areas being in put on the roads by 2025.
The discontinuance comes following a host of deaths on the all-lane motorways that campaigners bear blamed on the absence of a everlasting laborious shoulder. In February closing three hundred and sixty five days, a police commissioner acknowledged a stretch of neat motorway on the M20 became once “merely no longer bag”.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps acknowledged: “While our preliminary data reveals that neat motorways are among the most bag roads within the UK, it’s foremost that we run further to build certain of us definitely feel safer using them.”
He added: “I want to thank safety campaigners, including those which bear misplaced cherished ones, for rightly striving for greater requirements on our roads. I part their concerns.”
Meera Naran, a security campaigner whose 8-three hundred and sixty five days-stale son Dev died in a wreck on the M6 in 2018, acknowledged: “Archaic and neat motorways both bear their risks and advantages. I welcome this discontinuance within the rollout of neat motorways, which is able to give us all a certain different to assess the manner forward for our motorway community.”
In April 2021, the authorities acknowledged safety concerns round neat motorways and pledged that no unique schemes would beginning up until extra safety measures had been build in on existing stretches. The measures integrated installation of radar technology to detect concerns, upgraded cameras and an additional 1,000 signs.
