Motorway Installed With What It's Designed To Avoid - Traffic Lights

The idea of motorways is to get from A to B quickly. They don't get you stuck in towns and cities and provide a direct, lightning quick (most of the time) route where you can drive fast and not be slowed down by all those annoying things like pedestrians and traffic lights.

So it makes perfect sense that Highways England is launching a £7million ($9.1m) trial next month and installing traffic lights between the M6 and M62. Wait - what?

Yep, one of Britain's busiest motorways is going to be fitted with traffic lights in an attempt to ease congestion. Well, technically, it's a link road at a junction of the M6 and M62 in Cheshire that the trial will take place on, but it's close enough.

Credit: Google Maps

The experiment comes as official figures confirm that traffic on the UK's roads has hit record levels. While drivers say journeys everywhere are becoming more of a ball ache, it's motorways that have suffered the greatest increase.

According to RAC's annual Report On Motoring, 61 percent of motorists say that congestion and journey times have worsened in the last year.

Just last month, traffic data company Intrix found that over the past 12 months there had been 1.35million traffic jams on motorways and A roads. That's the equivalent of almost 3,700 every single day. Fuck me, imagine being stuck in that.

Credit: PA Images

The hope is that these traffic lights will help ease traffic queues at the Croft Interchange, where Junction 21A of the M6 meets Junction 10 of the M62.

Electronic signs that will warn of congestion and display compulsory lower speeds at certain times will be installed, and traffic lights will be switched on at the end of the link roads from the M6 onto the M62.

The system was first tested last week and will be fully implemented in December and January. Highways England will monitor congestion levels by camera for a year.

Official figures show vehicles travelled 68 billion miles on British motorways in the year ending in June, with traffic jams costing the economy an estimated £9billion a year. No wonder they're trying something completely ridiculous. Will it work? Obviously, we have no idea, but from our past experience with traffic lights, we're going to predict that no, it probably won't.

Featured Image Credit: Highways England

Topics: UK News, travel, Car, Motorway

Claire Reid

Claire is a journalist at LADbible who, after dossing around for a few years, went to Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated with a degree in Journalism and a whole load of debt. When not writing words in exchange for money she is usually at home watching serial killer documentaries surrounded by cats. You can contact Claire at [email protected]

@ClaireReid19