Leading councillor questions safety of Milton Keynes' new Smart Motorway

A councillor is asking the government to urgently investigate the safety of MK’s new Smart Motorway.

Conservative group leader at Milton Keynes City Council, Cllr David Hopkins, is concerned that the 14-mile M1 stretch from J14 at Newport Pagnell to J15 in Northampton may be causing delays in emergency services getting to accidents.

The section is one of the longest stretches of junction-free motorway in the country and is part of a £373m scheme to transform the section between junctions 14 and 16 into an All-Lane Running (ALR) motorway.

Changes include include using the hard shoulder as a running lane and imposing variable speed limits to control the flow of traffic.

But Cllr Hopkins is also the Vice Chairman of the Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire Authority and he is worried about the log jam faced by emergency service vehicles, in particular fire engines, attending road traffic accidents.

He says this has reportedly led to delays of up to an hour to get to the scene of an accident on both the north bound and south bound sides of the M1.

"The UK is the only country in Europe to have embraced so enthusiastically the concept of so-called smart motorways – ostensibly as a way to provide a speedy solution to providing additional capacity on these routes, especially at the busiest times,” he said.

"However, the suitability of this solution where there is a long run between junctions means that emergency vehicles can suffer severe delays (not experienced when motorways supported a hard shoulder safety lane) and reports suggest that it can take up to an hour for fire engines, for example, to weave their way through solid traffic to get to an incident.

"Time is life-saving in the most critical incidents and anything that adds to the time taken for vehicles to access the scene of those most serious incidents simply adds to the dangers for those caught up in that incident’.

Cllr Hopkins is speaking out after a new Smart motorway stretch finally opened in Milton Keynes last month after four years of work. The 4.2-mile section from Newport Pagnell services opened in December 5.

The councillor has contacted Iain Stewart, the MP for Milton Keynes South, who was recently appointed Chairman of the Transport Select Committee in parliament.

He is asking the MP that his Select Committee looks again at this stretch of motorway and review the safety issues that using all four lanes place upon drivers and those who have to attend the scene of incidents.

“I hope that the Transport Select Committee can urgently review the situation between Milton Keynes and Northampton on the M1 to see what can be done to address these very serious and genuine concerns,” he said.

Smart motorways have invoked some criticism over the years and in January last year the Department for Transport was forced to pause the rollout entirely amid increasing safety concerns.

The pause will last until five years' worth of safety data is available