Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of average journey times on smart motorways compared with the same journey prior to the introduction of smart motorway technology.

Highways England’s monitoring of the first two ‘all lane running’ smart motorways - on the M25 between junctions 5 to 7 and 23 to 27 - over their first 12 months of operation has shown that traffic flows have increased, users at peak periods are on average saving time and that journey time reliability has improved.

Highways England is closely monitoring the performance of all subsequent smart motorway schemes that have opened, most recently on the M1 and M6, and their initial data is encouraging. All major road schemes are routinely monitored as part of the Post Opening Project Evaluation programme and this is regularly published on Highways England’s website.