It may just be me, but using the one (relatively) safe place on a highway for cars sounds like a spectacularly bad idea in the first place.
Think how much money can be saved by just... not allowing anyone to drive there.
Think how much money can be saved by just... not allowing anyone to drive there.
It's a patch though, it alleviates some of the symptoms but the underlying problem that is much more difficult to stop is commuting and travel in general. I'm kinda glad we've been forced into a work-from-home experiment the past year, it gives hard data on WFH's effect on traffic pressure. But it's not enough.
I think companies should be incentivized to open up smaller offices across the country, and people incentivized to live where they work / work where they live. Which will mean bringing the 'good' jobs out of the cities.
Completely agree that it's a dumb idea, but I think the point is that converting 3 lanes + a hard shoulder to just 4 lanes is far cheaper and logistically easier than adding a whole extra lane.
I'm not sure if Highways England have any right to the land either side of a motorway, but if not I imagine spilling over into other people's land would be a huge sink of time and money.