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M42 Jct 3a - Jct 7 Active Traffic Management
What is different?
If you have driven down the M42 recently, you may have noticed a number of changes between junction 3A-7. These include the addition of:
- Lightweight gantries
- supporting new technology, such as signs, signals and cameras - located approximately every 500 metres along the road to provide earlier warnings to drivers of congestion or incidents ahead
- Signals
- informing drivers of the mandatory speed limits, traffic conditions on the motorway ahead and the availability of lanes
- Digital enforcement technology
- used to enforce the mandatory signals
- Driver information signs
- informing drivers of traffic conditions ahead
- Entry/exit signs
- informing drivers that they are entering or leaving an Active Traffic Management area
- Hard shoulder running
- when necessary, the hard shoulder will be used as an extra lane for all vehicles between junctions, to reduce congestion
- Emergency refuge areas
- distanced away from the main carriageway, wider than the hard shoulder and for use in all cases of emergency or break down, instead of the hard shoulder
- New emergency roadside telephones
- located in emergency refuge areas, used to contact the control centre in an emergency or break down and to receive advice on how to exit an emergency refuge area safely
- CCTV cameras
- an important safety feature providing comprehensive coverage of the scheme and enabling the control centre to monitor this section of the M42 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
- Full motorway lighting
- providing a safer driving environment at night and in bad weather and allowing the control centre to see the motorway using CCTV
- Sensors
- located every 100m, in the road surface, used to detect traffic and congestion, to alert the control centre to increases in traffic, allowing them to immediately manage the situation to reduce congestion. These are part of the Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling (MIDAS) system.
