Dri­vers will already be famil­iar with smart motor­ways around Birm­ing­ham on the M6 and M42 – and more recently on the M1 in Bed­ford­shire and the M62 between junc­tions 25 and 30 in West York­shire which is now open to traf­fic. Work to deliver fur­ther sec­tions of smart motor­ways on the M4 between junc­tions 19 and 20, and the M5 between junc­tions 15 and 17, north of Bris­tol are due to be com­plete by spring 2014.

On these roads, we use smart motor­ways to actively man­age traf­fic and improve your jour­neys, using a com­bi­na­tion of vari­able manda­tory speed lim­its and extra capac­ity through using the hard shoul­der at peak times.

New smart motor­way schemes that start work from 2013 onwards are being built to a new design stan­dard , where the hard shoul­der is per­ma­nently con­verted into an extra lane for traffic.