Peak Period Use By All Traffic
On specially signed sections of highway in the Boston Metro Area, cars are allowed to use the shoulder as they would a normal lane during morning and evening rush hours. The same scheme is employed elsewhere, such as on Interstate 66 in Virginia between the Capital Beltway and US-50.
In the UK, usage of the hard shoulder is known as hard shoulder running. A pilot project on an 11-mile stretch of the M42 motorway, near Birmingham began in September 2006. Special signage, new laybys and a variable speed limit have been put in place to improve safety. This has proved very successful, with journey times decreasing by 26% northbound and 9% southbound. Drivers can also better predict their journey times as the variability decreased by 27%. The average accident rate dropped from 5.2 to 1.5 per month. It has also proved popular with motorists, 60% of whom want to see it expanded to other English motorways. The system has been expanded to the M6, with plans to implement it to parts of M1, M25, M60 and M62 by 2015.
Read more about this topic: Shoulder (road)
Famous quotes containing the words peak, period and/or traffic:
“In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)