M23 - new smart motorway planned

[dcb]

Not content with years of roadworks on the M4, M3 and M25,
those *lovely* folks at Highways England have decided that
it is the turn of the M23 to be smartified. Deep joy, not.

Two years of roadworks - that'll put a smile on every user
of Gatwick Airport - and the net result will be lots
of speed cameras and no hard shoulder.

£158.4 million for 11 miles of motorway "enhancement".
I can think of better things to spend that amount of money on.

I hope the badgers enjoy their time in the publicity spotlight.

More details here:

http://roads.highways.gov.uk/projects/m23-junction...

[Dogwatch]

I think they would do better to re-engineer the junctions at Gatwick, Crawley and Pease Pottage so that traffic doesnt have to queue back onto the motorway.

And bin all those silly pre-metrication signs showing thirds of a mile to the next exit or whatever. It ain't gonna happen!

[jamoor]

Smart motorways are actually a good idea.

The only problem I have with them is the fact that it literally takes years for them to be installed.

[dcb]

jamoor said:

Smart motorways are actually a good idea.

There's a first time for everything, and you are the first person I've ever
heard praising smart motorways.

When chatting to folks, I find SM are universally derided as a complete
waste of money., brains and time (WOMBAT).

Back on topic, I find it odd that the M23 is being smartified, thus solving
a non-existent problem, when the M25 in the area of Leatherhead is in a very poor state.

The lane expansion from three to four seemly went badly, leaving a confusing
mix of the old lane markers and the new lane markers.

I've had a few near misses in that area, and I've seen plenty of vehicles weaving about,
trying to keep in the four lanes, not three. The fact that the surface is concrete and
so is reflective when the Sun is low in the sky for an hour or two each morning
and evening only makes a bad situation worse.

Other chunks of the M25, which merely have concrete surface but don't have
the three to four lane marking problem, are a much smaller, but significant, problem.

From my point of view, Highways England seem to be solving non-existent
problems on the M23, when nearby very real problems on the M25 aren't even addressed.

Let's not forget that local roads are on a different budget, so their currently rotten state
can't be addressed by Highways England.

It comes to something when BMW Germany have to send their suspension engineers
to England to gather data to tune their cars sold in England to the poor state of
England's roads.

[SantaBarbara]

System maximising antagonising Reasonable travellers SMART

Is that what it stands for?

[deckster]

dcb said:

There's a first time for everything, and you are the first person I've ever
heard praising smart motorways.

When chatting to folks, I find SM are universally derided as a complete
waste of money., brains and time (WOMBAT).

I loathe them with a passion, and particularly the way that they never seem to run at full NSL - even when the road is largely empty, they set the limit at 60mph.

However, and I really, really don't like saying this, the M42 is a much better road since they made it smart. Rather than being stop-start for miles and miles, you just sit there doing 50mph all the way. Boring and frustrating for sure, but way better than it was.

[Crazy4557]

Our current motorway system has a NSL of 70mph and we all breach this from time to time. However, there are many people in the Government departments who crave "control" and by turning our mtorway's into Smart motorways they have the ability to gain control over lots of people as they wish.

They sell it to us as improving flow and safety but I can only see the fact that they now have more control over us and can make drivers do things as they please. Good example is the warnings on gantry signs showing danger or incident ahead and reducing the speed with camera's programmed to start flashing at lower speeds after 1 minute etc only to find nothing ahead and a complete waste of time, this happens on about 90% of these instances.

It's not about safety or reducing congestion at all...you have been warned

[SantaBarbara]

Motorways today are worse than they were fifty years ago in my opinion

[jamoor]

SantaBarbara said:

Motorways today are worse than they were fifty years ago in my opinion

I think traffic volumes play a big part.

[old'uns]

looks like i'll be trying to find another way to Newhaven then on our 4-5 times per year.

SM are only as 'smart' as the muppet in control room, lets roll the 40/50/60 dice for each gantry and post it regardless of flow.
M1 Notts/Derbys always seems now to be 60 any time of the day
M6 10a south can be 50/40/60 within half mile and never the same 2 mornings on the trot ie same traffic numbers and 1 day will be 4 lanes , the next 3
M42 seems to be pretty constant apart from M40 > M42 where for some bizarre reason they slow you to 50 on the long sweeper and back to 60 on the merge?
M25 when fist started i hated it but then came to realise it worked to a large degree but up here...no

[Shakermaker]

Dogwatch said:

I think they would do better to re-engineer the junctions at Gatwick, Crawley and Pease Pottage so that traffic doesnt have to queue back onto the motorway.

And bin all those silly pre-metrication signs showing thirds of a mile to the next exit or whatever. It ain't gonna happen!

Just seen about the Smart changeover. that'll be a bugger then

But I definitely agree. These junctions all need sorting out. Having to use the Pease Pottage roundabout every single day when I don't want anything to do with the M23 or the A23 towards Brighton, I just want to go from the office to my house, but get caught in all the traffic, is most frustrating, and it is surely clear to any regular user of this road what the problem actually is, but noone seems keen to change it. The fact that all of the major exits are on the same side of the motorway means that you always have to cross either the entry or exit slip from one of them to get to your destination in 90% of cases is the issue (personal calculation based on what I see)