Following a controversial smart motorway safety call in the UK, the NTRO says the designs are still the safest way forward for the transport industry
The National Transport Research Organisation (NTRO) has provided its thoughts on the best way for Australian to go regarding smart motorways.
It’s been widely reported that the building of new smart motorways in England has been cancelled as UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledges concerns about safety and cost.
The plan is for 14 smart motorways to be removed from government road-building plans, with fatal incidents in which vehicles stopped in live lanes without a hard shoulder and being hit from behind lowering public trust.
The NTRO says smart motorway is a general term for three designs: controlled motorways (CM), that have signals on the on-ramps to measure the rate of vehicles entering the motorway and avoid oversaturation, dynamic hard shoulder running (DHSR), where the shoulder lane is only opened to traffic during high traffic demand periods and all lane running (ALR), where the shoulder lane is permanently open to traffic as a running lane, such as what is seen in the UK.
With differences between the designs, the NTRO says Australia uses the CM approach to maintain the shoulder and improve road safety by avoiding merging hazards.
The DHSR approach is frequently deployed in Germany and the Netherlands and has also been proven to improve road safety.
“Smart motorways, if designed and operated properly, increase productivity and also road safety,” the NTRO says.
“No shortcuts must be taken to avoid careful and sometimes time-consuming planning and design or complex motorway operation.
“The mechanisms of crash occurrence and flow-breakdown leading to congestion must be understood to develop and apply suitable countermeasures.”
The NTRO says it’ll continue contributing to knowledge to help realising the best smart motorway approaches.
Based off its own experience, the NTRO says it has advice for the most suitable smart motorway designs and can provide training of staff on all aspects of planning, design and operation.