Government extends hard shoulder scheme

The government has announced plans to extend the use of the hard shoulder on congested motorways at peak times in a package that will also plough £6bn in roads by 2014.

Trials on the M42 in the West Midlands have been deemed a success, leading to the government considering plans to open up 500 miles of hard shoulder in heavy traffic, and may charge motorists up to £5 use them.

The scheme is widely used in the US, where drivers are charged a toll to use the hard shoulder lanes.

Hard shoulder schemes are likely to be introduced on the M3 and M4 coming into London, the M4 and M5 around Bristol, and the M3 and M27 approaching Southampton.

Using the lane for car-sharing vehicles or turning the lane into a crawler lane for large vehicles are options also being discussed.

The government is also investing significant amounts in widening lanes and improving junctions across the country.

At a local level councils in Bristol, Greater Manchester, Leicester, London, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and the West Midlands will be able to tap into a £60 million Urban Congestion Performance Fund.

Local councils in Leeds, Cambridgeshire and Reading will be allocated funding to tackle congestion, combined with the power to introduce possible local congestion charging.

The majority of congestion is in our towns and cities, where the answer cannot be building new roads. That is why I will continue to support councils who want to investigate whether radical packages, which include public transport improvements combined with local congestion charging, would be the right solution for them."

The AA says motorists still need to be convinced of the benefits of paying to use additional motorway lanes.

Edmund King, AA president, said: “We need a host of improvements to combat congestion. We reiterate our view that safety must be paramount when it comes to hard shoulder running and therefore we need to see adequate safe havens and overhead gantries. The M42 scheme worked well as much attention was paid to detail and safety of drivers.

“Hard shoulder running is not a panacea for all our motorway congestion problems and we still believe that some motorways should be widened as this brings greater capacity and safety benefits”.

“In terms of local congestion charging schemes we believe that the local population should decide whether such schemes should go ahead.”

Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker condemned the plans as short-sighted: "This is a carbon catastrophe. Yet more funding is being channelled into increasing road capacity rather than expanding the railways and supporting public transport.

"The Department for Transport has lazily fallen back on predict and provide and has chosen to ignore the fact that any attempts to build our way out of congestion are doomed to failure."

Dan Robinson, Head of Green Flag comment, "We believe that the use of the hard shoulder as a running lane goes some way to ease congestion on motorways. However, this is a short-term solution rather than the answer to improving overcrowded roads and it does have some road safety implications."

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