Smart motorways: preparing for a digital future

But first, what is a smart motorway? A smart motorway is a section of motorway that is able to increase motorway capacity and reduce congestion during peak periods, using traffic management methods. Technology is used to monitor and control the flow of traffic, including using the hard shoulder as a running lane and using variable speed limits.

In his October Autumn Statement, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond pledged to deliver the largest ever strategic roads investment package as part of a plan to put world-class infrastructure at the heart of the UK’s industrial strategy, including the smart motorway programme.

For Highways England, the government owned company responsible for operating, maintaining and improving England’s motorways and major A roads, this pledge translates into a funding commitment of £25.3bn for the second Road Investment Strategy (RIS2) over the five year period between 2020 and 2025.

Without question it is a hike in ambition compared to RIS1, Highways England’s first Road Investment Strategy, which committed a more modest £15.2bn investment between 2015 and 2020. But, in return, it has pledged to go beyond simply meeting the nation’s transport needs and to start to tackle wider priorities of rebalancing the economy, supporting the development of new housing, safeguarding the environment and preparing the network for a digital future. We spoke to Jim O’Sullivan, Chief Executive of Highways England, about his ambitious £25.3bn plans for the network.

“The final content of the work package has still got to be worked out in terms of which schemes will be built, but RIS2 stabilises our maintenance funding, creates a package of funding for the building and repair of major structures, and allows us to continue our smart motorways programme,” explains Jim. “We are future-proofing the network by moving the smart motorway programme away from the construction of individual schemes that address congestion towards the creation of a connected spine for the country,” he adds, highlighting that embedding technology into the network via smart motorways is key to creating a road network ready to drive the future. “That means joining up the smart network, because at the moment we are well connected around major cities but not in between them.”

We are building a network that is ready for electric vehicles and connected autonomous vehicles.

The smart motorway programme is clearly central to the future of the nation’s strategic road network. Having started in 2006 on the M42 in the West Midlands as a way to increase capacity through temporary use of the hard shoulder for traffic during peak flows, the programme is now being rolled out across the entire network as a key part of Highways England’s vision for digitally managed highways, where connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are the norm. “We are building a network that is ready for electric vehicles (EVs) and connected autonomous vehicles,” he explains, pointing out that new technology is already being installed in Highways England control rooms, cables are being laid across the network and they are experimenting with 4G and 5G in preparation. “In the not so distant future, the vision is for connected vehicles to be able to join the network, and receive information for the entire length of time that they are with our network so that they leave having had the best possible journey.” This move to increase focus on creating a smart network is just the latest major transformation for the organisation since it morphed from the Highways Agency into the independent-minded, government- owned company Highways England in 2015. 

Becoming an informed client which understands and has the capability to manage its assets has been the priority and has seen over 1,000 staff join the organisation to insource many of the critical management activities. “We should understand the asset, we should understand what the asset does, and we should understand the maintenance it needs,” says O’Sullivan. “We didn’t in the past so we have now insourced the staff that organise and do those inspections and maintenance. “RIS1 has been successful but the question now is what the next step is and how do we start to take the learning from one scheme to the next scheme,” he says. “We have got to move towards being an informed buyer in everything we do – and that applies to technology as much as it applies to concrete, steel, and asphalt.” 

We have got to move towards being an informed buyer in everything we do.

This move started in November, when Highways England announced its new Routes to Market procurement strategy and the £8.7bn Regional Delivery Partnership programme that will develop, design and construct highway projects across England from 2019 through to 2024. This will see the organisation embark on deep collaboration and long-term relationships with a series of new Delivery Integration Partners, in an attempt to boost delivery effectiveness and efficiency. O’Sullivan explains that contracts will no longer be awarded on price but will examine in detail how the last job was delivered. Key questions will be asked around safety performance, about being a good neighbour in the local community and, of course, about the impact on motorists driving through the work. The goal will be to find the lessons learnt and understand how they will be incorporated by the team into the next job. “Collaboration relies on relationships, but how do you build relationships when every time you come to the end of a project the team is disbanded and everyone is scattered to the four winds?” he says.

Collaboration relies on relationships.

Meanwhile, the Autumn Statement also killed off the future use of the private finance initiative as a procurement tool for public infrastructure – a tool which has been used and developed extensively on the highways network over the last two decades. And with Highways England gearing up to find bidders for the £5bn Lower Thames Crossing – a new three-lane dual carriageway and 3.8km tunnel between the M2 near Rochester and the M25 in Essex – and the £1.3bn A303 tunnel under Stonehenge, questions remain around what happens next. O’Sullivan said he remains 100% convinced that these projects will go ahead, pointing out that they are critical to the regions and communities that they serve and so “will be adequately and appropriately funded” by the government – not least as the government has a made a commitment to 2026 and 2027 delivery dates for the two schemes. “The PF2 framework is gone and it will take the government a period of time to put a replacement in place – if they can find a way to deliver value from private finance,” he says, adding that that as only a small proportion of the total roads portfolio was to be privately financed, the impact would not, in reality, be that great. “It is for the Treasury to determine how these things are financed. They will find a way.” “It would be good if, by 2025, people truly valued the strategic road network as a national asset and started to have a true understanding of the contribution that it makes to the UK,” he says, but points out that there is still a long way to go in terms of cementing highways into the heart of the nation. 

“In RIS2 we also have to start to think about and prepare for RIS3. It takes about eight years from route announcement, through designing and building a big scheme, to opening for traffic so any work we do today will not be completed until 2026 – and that is definitely RIS3 territory.”

Carter Jonas manages property, enquiries, sales and estates for Highways England across its national portfolio, which includes over 900 assets valued at over £100m. In addition to the estate management team, we also undertake acquisitions and disposals as well as providing landlord and tenant, professional advisory and treasury services on behalf of the portfolio. 

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The government’s latest National Infrastructure and Construction pipeline shows over £600bn of investment over the next 10 years. Planned projects will enhance the nation’s transport, energy, water and communications networks, and help to solve the housing crisis.

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