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We want to hear your opinion...

James Brown
Every other country in the EU has four lane motorways within a 30 mile radius of their capital city. Why on earth can we not develop our infrastructure to a similar level of sophistication. Once we have four lanes, then is the time to consider hard shoulder running.

Maureen Smeaton
Maybe a silly question, but what happens when there are accidents or breakdowns and hard shoulder is in use?J10 to J15 regularly have problems.

Mark , Bedford
IK wonder what happens to the millions of pounds promised by t he government for this scheme. Also what hapens to the construction workers who also have been promised work for a few years on the motorways . Shortsighted money saving .

Kayleigh
What is the difference between having to create "very regular" laybys and just adding an extra lane, even if they have it tailing off at each junction and re-appearing so that they don't ahev to chance the junctions themselves.

m1 user
why is there a speed limit of 50mph on the m1 junction 6-10 even after the widening work is done?

David,Luton.
Another bodge job from an incompetent labour government.People wont just use it when the signs say so, they will use it all the time.How will foreign drivers understand signs that are only displayed in english? Doesn't take a genius to forsee that this will result in the deaths of some poor unfortunate who has broken down in between the so-called safe haven lay bys.This is nothing short of a criminal act by a failed government and i trust every victim sues this government until it sees sense and abandons this insane idea.

Johnny, Watford
Widen it you fools! the people that cancle the work obivously never drive on the M1!

m1 user
Totally agree with Andy, Watford. Drivers, especially at weekends, hardly use lanes 1 & 2 at all but cram dangerously, bumper to bumper, in lane 4. Anyone asked the motorway traffic officers their views?

neville
yes the m1 should be widened from top to bottom.ie leeds to london .

dave
its bad enough if you break down on the motorway what will it be like when the hard shoulder is in use.

Matt
The hard shoulder is not supposed to be a running lane- it is for breakdowns and emergencies. Hard shoulders will never be a substitute for extra lanes, and the government must get this through their heads.

Alex
Ok, hard shoulder running sounds like a good idea and in tests it's been ok, but until the much talked of major incident occurs we're not going to know how well the emergency services cope and how quickly they'll be able to get to an incident. On this stretch of the M1 that will probably be a fatal mistake.Add to this the problem that the M1 hard shoulder was never designed to carry traffic and has been subsiding in recent years there will clearly still need to be work to strengthen it otherwise it will just colapse under the load. Cancelling this widening is just delaying the inevitable just as delaying the J6A-J10 widening back in the 1980s!

Ian Reynolds
Once again this Government is putting the lives of Bedfordshire people at risk to save money. It is absolute folly to have traffic driving down the hard shoulder....pity any poor soul whose vehicle breaks down and is hit by an HGV.

mark
all the billions that this government raises from motorists and the motorists get so little in return..this is yet another example of 'cheapskate' government and very bad economic planning..sooner or later it will have to be done and when it is it will cost so much more because the government reneged on promises....this epitomises the whole government approach to providing us with a decent road network..half-baked and short sighted.

D Palmer
Hard shoulder running is a good alternative. The will be emergency lay-bys at very regular intervals. They've been using hard-shoulder running in Germany succesfully for years. The M42 system works well.

D. W.
How will the emergency services cope when all lanes come to a stop including the hard shoulder?

martina
it is an accident waiting to happen, if people are allowed to use the hardshoulder at peak times they will expect to use it whenever they are held whether it is safe to use or not

Michael
Delighted to hear the plans are to be scrapped. This might also prevent Luton Town FC locating to Junction 12 (which they don't want to do anyway) and also prevent the development of a 1.1m square feet wharehouse development on prime green belt land as the roads will not be able to cope. My big worry though is what will happen if a car breaks down when in hard shoulder mode? I doubt the HA or Police will get the relevant lane closure info up on signs in time - the old system was a joke as nobody believed what the signs said and I've been using the M1 for 30 years.

Pete, St Albans
On the M42 you are only allowed to use the hard shoulder when traffic speeds on the running lanes drops down to 40-50mph or less and the traffic is heavy (i.e. bumper to bumper). So you will not be cruising at 70mph on the hard shoulder and suddenly be confronted by a stationary vehicles that has been unable to make it to the additional emergency reservations that will be provided every quarter of a mile.

Jitendra, Luton
What happens to cars that breakdown? Will the hard shoulder be shut? Will gritters be gritting the hard shoulder? Planned by someone who doesn't use the motorways and not at peek times.

Paul Brooks
Agree with this. Not sure it needed to be widened between 10 and 13. Not sure we need hard shoulder running either. The issue is that Junction 13 won't be redeveloped and it should be anyway. A single road on the junction of the main Cambridge to Milton Keynes road would be like having a single track railway into London. So good decision but please rebuild junction 13.

Dawn
I'm glad the M1 plans will not be going ahead. I travel north on the M1 every day - and have for the past 7 years. It is not needed. The roadworks between 6 and 10 caused so many delays - at least that distruption will now be avoided between 10 and 13.

John Josephs
I think that this is a false economy. Hard shoulder running is certainly better than nothing but the M1 has such heavy traffic that I'm concerned about safety at peak times

M Doggett,Luton
A very shortsighted and dangerous scheme.The M42 has junctions a lot less distant apart than the M1.The HA has already spent £40m on this widening scheme so carry on and widen J10-13.Hard shoulder running,apart from being dangerous,will reach its peak very shortly.Widen this section and put in the gantries etc then in ten years time,there will be extra capacity for running hard shoulder if required.

ALNUR ADATIA
DANGEROUS AND AND WILL NOT SOLVE THE TRAFFIC PROBLEM. 4 LANE MOTORWAY IS THE ONLY WAY .

John Newport Pagnell
Mental or what? Users can't use 3 lanes properly, what chance do we have using the hard shoulder. Accidents waiting to happen, as if we don't have enough!

Andy, Watford
I travel to Birmingham everday on the M1 and have had to sit through years of delays and restrcited speed limits while they turned junction 6-10 into a 4 lane motorway. The finished result is a complete waste of time. Idiots still sit in lanes 3 and 4 at 55mph with no regard to other drivers. Why is more not done to educate drivers about using the extra lanes for over taking only. When I have had to use the M42 on my journey to and from work at rush hour the use of the hard shoulder has been very effective and not in the least bit dangerous. Why couldn't the government have thought of this scheme before wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on a useless 4th lane.

Matt
The M42 works really well and this will help weaving at J12 (but not as much as the proposed segregated merge/diverge areas would have) as the hard shoulder is usually signed for the traffic heading for the next exit.Laybys will undoubtedly be provided at 400/500m intervals such as the M42 and this is usually enough for those who have a problem to get into a layby without having to stop in the running carriageway.Yes it is a shame its not going to be widenned, but widenning will only encourage more and more traffic.

charlotte milton keynes
Utterly dangerous suggestion. time to sack this government.

M1 user
I agree, they've ploughed so much of our money into the banks recently that they are probably trying to save money somewhere. Sounds like a safety hazrd to me too.

Regular M1 user
can't help but think that this is just a cost saving exercise by the government

Roger Raymond, St Albans
The hard shoulder is used by emergency vehicles to get to accidents quickly - how would they do this if the hard shoulder was being used by other traffic?

Kevin, Kempston
How about if the hard shoulder was designated as soley for heavy good vehicles and lorries - surely this would then remove congestion in the other lanes and so speed up traffic?

Carol, Hemel
Way too dangerous to use the hard shoulder, where do you go then when you breakdown and have to stand at the side of the motorway, this is ridiculous. I was doing 50mph down the hard shoulder a couple of months ago where the road widening was and all of a sudden there was a woman standing in the middle of my road waving cars to move over as her car had broken down and I assume her husband was changing the tyre, unbelievably dangerous. I had traffic all around me and could do nothing but brake hard and indicate to move over. There has to be a hard shoulder this was so dangerous, we need somewhere to go when we break down. Imagine coming up to a car stopped on the motorway horrendous.

Mel, MK
Is using the hard shoulder for traffic safe? What happens in the event of a brakedown?

Colin, Houghton Regis
At last - a Government Minister with some sense! Further widening of the M1 would have been a complete waste of money and devastating for those people living near the motorway who would have had their lives blighted by the whole shortsighted scheme.

Pete, MK
If this saves us having to put up with the horrendous roadworks that have plagued the M1 recently - then I'm all for it!

Ian, Luton
I do worry about the safety aspects of this plan. We've all seen on the news the results of lorry ploughing into the back of a broken down car parked on the hard shoulder...