Conservative Group Leader at Milton Keynes City Council, Cllr David Hopkins is calling on the government to investigate the safety of so-called smart motorways – and in particular the 14-mile run from J14 in (Newport Pagnell) in Milton Keynes J15 (Northampton) one of the longest stretches of junction free motorway in the country.
Cllr Hopkins, who is also the Vice Chairman of the Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire Authority, is especially concerned about the log jam faced by emergency service vehicles attending road traffic accidents, in particular Fire Engines, reportedly leading 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 at this point.
Cllr Hopkins has contacted Iain Stewart MP (MP for Milton Keynes South and recently appointed Chairman of the Transport Select Committee in parliament) requesting that his committee look again at this specific 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, often at the busiest times when the motorway is most congested.
Cllr Hopkins comments’ 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. 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 continues. ‘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’.
