Smart motorways make sense, says FTA

The implementation of smart motorways in Northern Ireland would make economic, environmental and safety sense, according to the Freight Transport Association (FTA) today. Responding to a study commissioned by the roads authority, TransportNI, which outlines the proposal of the M1 and M2 in and out of Belfast becoming smart motorways, FTA stated that freight operators would see benefits in the introduction, economically, environmentally and would improve safety on the routes.
September 4, 2015 Read time: 2 mins

The implementation of smart motorways in Northern Ireland would make economic, environmental and safety sense, according to the 6983 Freight Transport Association (FTA) today.
 
Responding to a study commissioned by the roads authority, TransportNI, which outlines the proposal of the M1 and M2 in and out of Belfast becoming smart motorways, FTA stated that freight operators would see benefits in the introduction, economically, environmentally and would improve safety on the routes.
 
Smart motorways use the hard shoulder on parts of motorways as a running lane primarily in order to help ease traffic congestion.
 
Seamus Leheny, FTA Policy and Membership Relations manager for Northern Ireland commented: “The major routes around Belfast suffer from recurrent traffic congestion at peak times. Using hard shoulders on the M1 and M2 in and out of Belfast, especially at peak hours – must be given serious consideration. Smart Motorway use increases capacity during rush-hours which would mean improved journey time reliability into Belfast City Centre and the Harbour, and would result in lower emissions and fewer accidents.”
 
The TransportNI study also looked at restricting use of the hard shoulders to buses, multiple occupancy vehicles and freight traffic which would also be feasible and a significant benefit for improving freight movements in the Greater Belfast while also improving public transport.
 
8101 Highways England has implemented similar schemes in Great Britain as far back as 2006, with the M42 scheme after six months reporting an 18 per cent reduction in pollution from vehicle emissions and a four per cent reduction in fuel use, according to the FTA.

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Roads revolution adds 900 miles of extra capacity
    August 27, 2014
    Road users in the UK will see around 900 extra lane miles of road capacity added to England’s strategic highway network by 2021, a third more than was provided in the previous decade. The boost is thanks to a huge US£39.7 billion investment, the biggest since the 1970s, which will see annual funding for enhancements to motorways and major A roads triple over the next six years. Investment includes more than US$15 billion on maintenance, US$10 billion of which will be spent on resurfacing 3,000 miles of t
    Read More
  • Need for performance standards for road user charging systems
    February 2, 2012
    GNSS-based road use metering systems need performance metrics, as well as ways to test and reliably compare them. Bern Grush and Joaquín Cosmen write about the function of the GNSS Metering Association for Road-use charging (GMAR), recently set up to address this issue
    Read More
  • PTV sets its sights on Smart City solutions
    February 9, 2017
    Making a city smarter not only relies on understand technological opportunities but also human decision-making, as Miller Crockart explains. Cities are about people – a fact that can easily be forgotten when experts talk about roads, healthcare and education as though they are abstract and unconnected monoliths rather than things people use. Understanding how and why people use services is vital for making decisions on how they can be optimised for maximum efficiency across inter-connected networks that for
    Read More
  • Vehicle ownership - a thing of the past?
    May 22, 2012
    Convergence of electron-powered vehicles with connected vehicle technologies could mean that only a few decades from now the idea of owning a vehicle will be entirely alien to the road user. By Technolution chief scientist Dave Marples with Jason Barnes Even when taken individually, many of the developments going on and around vehiclebased mobility will bring about major changes in transportation. Taken collectively, the transformations we might expect are nothing short of profound. Enumeration of the influ
    Read More

Highlighted Content