Smart Motorways Kill was contacted anonymously by an engineer on England’s motorway network with devastating information on the state of safety equipment and repairs. He has been involved in reactive maintenance, being sent out to repair where possible or identify a fault for follow-up.
“The normal induction for working in this capacity does not apply to Smart Motorways, which are a different kettle of fish.
We have a maximum of 15 minutes—a short stop—to try and repair a problem, say CCTV that isn’t working. Highways England can open the hard shoulder on a motorway, for example the M62 near Leeds, at any point. So we will receive very short notice that the area where we are meant to be working will be turning into an All Lanes Running (ALR).
The problem that exists is that they are often putting brand new technology onto an old system. That’s the case in a lot of areas. Like Junction 34 of the M1 where Jason was killed. This is an old section of the motorway, where they have placed new communications. The problem is that this new technology is running on the old transmission lines. It’s like your landline where, if the line is degraded, you can get crackling and hissing. It’s the same with this. It’s like trying to play Grand Theft Auto on an old dial up connection. It’s trying to send all this information down a redundant system, one that simply can’t cope with it.
Take the Regional Control Centres (RCC). They are the mission control. They will have the latest technology, monitors, etc. So you have all this space age technology at either end. But the bit in the middle, actually on the motorway, is relying on outdated lines. This means that—whatever the latest technology at RCC—in many instances, the image they get on their screens, may be snowy or blurred.
It can be very hard to pick anything out. The communication (comms) lines on which some of this technology runs can be 20 to 30 years old. It’s still running on the old BT copper lines. So you are trying to send and receive binary code but it’s coming back snowy or distorted. The camera next to the RCC will be crystal clear but further down the road it gets much worse. It’s like using a tin can and a string.
When the cameras are down—and this happens more than is admitted—RCC have lost communication with that camera. It can take some time to repair because the engineers can’t get out, and it just gets left.
Between Junction 34 to 40 of the M1, for example, there are 20 to 30 cameras but only about three-quarters of these are running at any one time. In that situation, the control might try to piggyback on other cameras. So they will be looking from the camera at Junction 31 all the way up to Junction 35. The longer the pan, the more distortion. Three miles further down the road, they can barely pick anything up.
We told Highways England that the problem was the backbone of the system. Every gantry on the motorway has a comms network. And they are going through the gantry’s putting all these new comms on—speed updates, messages, etc. But the backbone which we have been trying to maintain for years was not designed for all this. It was only designed for limited comms. It literally can’t cope with what is being put on it.
The M62 at Leeds/Bradford, for example. The comms there is that bad that they have no idea if the message they have set [for details of an obstruction, stopped vehicle or any other reason] is actually showing. They can set the message in control, they can tell it to set the speed limit at 40mph for whatever reason, but they’ve no idea if it’s showing. The only way they can check is by panning the cameras around to look at the speed signs.
That’s the problem when you are trying to graft new equipment onto old lines. It’s a nightmare and the problem is a hell of a lot worse in the south. If you take the M25, that is a massively built up area, lots of congestion, housing, etc. in a confined space. Often equipment doesn’t work on it because some appliance in someone’s house nearby is interfering with the signal. That’s a fact. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been out a fault, and nine out of ten I’ve had to put it down to a faulty microwave in someone’s house!
Jobs can take ages to do. If it’s a prolonged job, like swopping out faulty signs, then Highways England have to put a blockade on the road to allow it to take place. When you see all the roadworks, these have been planned months ago. They have to be scheduled over a long time. And it’s often the case, that you can have everything in place—all the big wagons out, the crews, etc.—and your permit is in place but Highways England, as the all-seeing power, can pull that job at the last minute because they don’t want to shut the motorway down.
It’s the same with the detection system that is used on the Emergency Refuge Areas (ERAs). What should happen is that when a car or lorry makes it to an ERA for whatever reason, there is a square box in the middle, under which is an indicative loop. A piece of wire. When the vehicle pulls on to it, it creates a short circuit, which acts like a switch to tell the RCC that the ERA is in use. Then the cameras should turn around and point at the ERA. The ERAs are called places of safety. But a lot of the time, this system doesn’t work. In theory, the RCC should know in seconds when an ERA is occupied. But they sometimes they won’t know for over an hour, by which times recovery has been and gone. Sometimes the loop in the ERA’s will go down, they become perished by water damage and the RCC will always think there’s a car on it and as it’s known to be faulty, it will just be ignored.
You can identify faulty loops but the report is passed to HE and it’s up to them to decide what to do about it. Do they decide to leave it for a while or whether it will have to be recut eventually. They might decide that they will wait until they have to carry out major work in the area. I’ve known faulty loops and cameras left for months at a time, even longer.
Or take the MIDAS [Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling] traffic detection system in place on the M1. This is purely for traffic flow. That’s all it identifies. If it detects slowing traffic, it can notify RCC. They will take a look and ascertain the problem. It might be a slow lorry, a wide-bearing load, and they will decide to leave it. If the traffic comes to a halt, MIDAS will pick this up and begin to slow the traffic in the rear down. But this takes time. The most lethal time to be stuck in a lane is 4-6 minutes, because traffic in the rear has yet to be slowed.
One of the difficulties is that now you are dealing with engineering graduates who have letters after their names but they don’t know the motorway. They will tell you that this thing is going to work, or this has to be done, and the computer says it can be done, but it can’t. Because that’s not the set-up we’ve got on the motorways.
You would have to have upgraded the entire network from the start, not try to run this comms on something that is redundant. You see this problem with home WIFI. In some areas, work is taking place to rip out the old BT copper lines because they’re completely incapable of coping with the amount of information and devices that are now being run through them. We all know about WIFI dropping out all the time, because you’re trying to push 5,10,20 devices through a line built for one.
A lot of the cameras on the motorway don’t work. They’re not maintained. Many are of the old wind up/wind down type. You will go to try and repair it quickly and the metal wire will snap because its exposed to the weather. That’s a process that can then take months to put right. It can take more than one year in some instances. You have to order the right wire, which can’t just be picked up of a shelf, and then you have to organise the repair, with all the difficulties I’ve explained. Sometimes, it’s not just the wire and there will be a fault with the camera itself and it will have to be sent away and fixed or replaced. That can be a year or more to do one camera. You’ve also got to factor in weather conditions for such a repair. If it’s very windy, we can’t get the job done until the wind has died down.
My risk assessments on jobs can be 10 pages long. I’m not taking chances. I’ve got a family and I’ve had a few near misses, having to jump out the way quickly. I know what it is to drive an HGV for long hours. It’s easy to momentarily lose concentration because you’re tired, day dreaming or your mind wandered for a moment.
Those of us who have worked on the motorways for years always knew there would be issue with removing the hard shoulder. We knew it would be a nightmare.
We can’t get on the motorway to carry out repairs with All Lanes Running. How can we pull up? We’re constantly waiting to get on a job, parked up somewhere, because the traffic count is too high and HE won’t stop it. I’ve waited days to get on a job. I probably average one job a week.
There’s a window between midnight to 2am, if you’re lucky. They definitely don’t want you on after 4 am when it’s getting to rush hour. They can’t afford to shut the lane. They will get fined—by HE. HE actually fines itself!
In the past we could pull up on the hard shoulder, at least to diagnose a problem and know what is needed. According to my remit, I can’t take anything out on the hard shoulder though. As soon as the wheels on my vehicle stop, I have to be out and over the barrier. So I can only take the equipment I can carry. That’s for my safety. I can only walk where the barrier is, and if there is no barrier, then I can’t infringe. All the equipment has to be behind the barrier. Sometimes, I will identify a problem and decide where is best to get out. Remember I’m having to do this while driving down a motorway. I will think a spot is okay and I will stop, get out, get over the barrier and walk a mile or so to the problem. Then I will find out that I was wrong, there is no barrier there and I can’t do the job. So it will be left until it can get done.
The public never find out the real reason for faults. Some years ago, they put a concrete barrier between junctions on the M1. It was a major job. But it all had to be ripped out when it was done because they discovered that it was the wrong concrete. The concrete they had used was explosive, so couldn’t absorb an impact. The public don’t know that. They’re never told the real reason.
HE don’t want to know that they system is flawed. It’s not just one faulty component. A lot of the motorway is outdated. It would all have to be retrofitted but that’s a process that would take ages and cost.
I know there is faulty gear on the network between Wakefield and Worksop, for example, that’s been that way for the last year. In the last six months, I’ve recorded 250 faults alone.
I could go on. The emergency telephones in the ERA—many of them don’t work. They should go straight through the RCC but they don’t work. They are supposed to say they are out of use but HE don’t want to show them as being out of order because then the public would wonder why they aren’t being repaired.
Smart Motorways were fundamentally flawed from the start. The only reason they were introduced was to improve traffic flow, rather than widening the carriageway. They are still killing people.”
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