From National Highways:
We opened the M1 junction 13 to Newport Pagnell Services to national speed limit at 6am on the 7th March.
Work on the rest of the upgrade is ongoing and there will be some weeknight closures between junction 13 and 15 to install low-noise surfacing. This work is expected to complete by mid-May.
The original M1 junction 13 to 16 includes a place to stop in an emergency every 1.1 mile on average at the moment. The introduction of an additional 8 emergency areas (taking the total number of this scheme to 46) reduces the overall scheme spacing from 0.9 miles.
The other sections of the project will be opened in phases, starting with the northbound and southbound carriageways between Newport Pagnell Services and junction 15, later this Summer.
Transport Committee
You will be aware that on Wednesday 12 January 2022 the Government’s response to the Transport Committee’s inquiry into the roll out and safety of smart motorways was published. It included a commitment to pause the rollout of future all lane running (ALR) smart motorway schemes until a full five years’ worth of safety and economic data is available from upgrades delivered before 2020. National Highways have set out more information on this in our MP smart motorway briefing.
Upgrade projects which are more than 50% complete will not be paused, they will be completed and will open with all their new features. The M1 junction 13 to 16 falls into that category. It is safer to finish projects that are over the halfway mark than to leave them with traffic management in place for five years. Leaving traffic management out for that long would also lead to significant disruption for road users.
We will be opening with radar Stopped Vehicle Detection technology in place. The additional eight emergency areas are included in sections two and three and are currently in construction ready for use once those sections open.
If you have any questions, or if you would like any further information about the project, please contact the project team at the following email address: