That is a truly WONDERFUL observation:

"Added journey-time benefit was also achieved by using the hard shoulder as an extra lane"

Excellent. Does that mean we lose the safety zone of the hard shoulder (the only available route for emergency services for when it goes really wrong for the few times traffic actually moves)?

I have a better suggestion: return those bus lanes to REAL public use, i.e. accessible for everyone. First off they were paid by taxing the car drivers to death, secondly they presently offer an avenue for buses and taxis to exceed the speed limit by quite a margin because speed cameras only seem to be placed on the car drivers' side.

If those lanes are returned to those for whom the investment was made and who actually paid for it, "added journey-time benefit" can de seen almost instantly.

And get someone who talks normal English to write that report. "Added journey-time benefit" - the clear English campaign people surely must grimace reading that.

IBM will do what they usually do. Under bid, and the cut staff numbers, while forcing those left behind to work longer than contracted hours in order to make a profit or break even.

All the people who tailgate and undertake on the M25 will probably block the camera's getting a good shot of peoples numberplates anyway.

is surely the key to preventing the stop start scenario. It has been demonstrated that by leaving a larger gap you can slow down more gently.

Watch the pratts in their golfs (golves?) driving a yard behind the next car at 95 in the 'fast lane'. Front car blips his brakes, the next one applies the brakes quite firmly - by the end of 6 or 7 cars the last few are stamping on the brake and slowing dramatically.

Surely what we really need is a camera to enforce a decent gap?

If they increase relatively passive enforcement there's an obvious side effect which has already been seen in the congestion charging zone. A substantial number of people start to use fake or cloned number plates. Often this is linked to having no MOT, insurance or tax either. This leads to two more problems. The only people getting caught are the ones that are relatively law abiding. And the second is that the general standard of driving falls because the people with the 5th hand BMW with faked plates and no insurance really don't care.

Scope creep. Don't you just love it?

We're all destined to be tagged, monitored, controlled, charged and administered whether we like it or not. It would be cheaper to just tattoo a serial number on everybody's arms, but then that would be too much like Naziism wouldn't it?

I drive the M25 a lot (if that isn`t a contradiction in terms!) and I absolutely loath the variable speed limits imposed on the stretch from the A3 to round about the M40. In my opinion, they serve no useful purpose, other than to bunch all the traffic up in one place and forcing them down to a snail`s pace. How this can be judged a success is completely beyond my comprehension and I`ve yet to find anyone who disagrees with me. It would be nice if, at peak times, traffic was actually able to go at the 40 m.p.h. shown on the signs but, as anyone knows who goes anti-clockwise at around 5.0.p.m. (especially on a Friday!) quite often it would be quicker to get out the car and walk. The extra, recently-built lane seems to have made little or no difference and I dread to think what the situation will be like when Heathrow Terminal 5 opens its doors for business.

Speaking of Heathrow, I recall one infamous Saturday morning trip I made there. Normally not a problem at the weekend. Expected travelling time from my base - around 1 hour, 15 mins. Instead, it took just over 2 hours, 30 mins! All the advisory matrix signs were on 40 m.p.h. and the compulsory signs were the same. The combined result - total gridlock virtually all the way. There were no accidents - the only "hazard" being pouring rain, so I can only assume that some kindly soul in a control-room somewhere saw fit to try and slow everything down and that he certainly did. It also took me the best part of 2 hours to travel the 70-odd miles back home after spending a fruitless 2 hours at the airport, because my passengers didn`t turn up (but that, as they say, is another story!). Needless to say, I was not best pleased and rattled off an e-mail to the Ministry of Transport, thoroughly castigating them, and suggesting that they seem to have completely lost sight of the fact that motorways were, in fact, originally supposed to have been designed with the idea of carrying high-speed traffic to decrease journey times and the idea of speed-limits does rather seem to negate that theory. Needless to say, the answer (which came from the leader of the team responsible for that stretch of motorway - wow!) was far from satisfactory, obviously consisting, more-or-less, of a copy and paste of the specification of the system that runs the limits signs, apparently triggered by sensors placed in the carriageway every couple of hundred metres and how marvellously it all worked! This was some time ago and their final paragraph went something like: "There are many far-reaching schemes being discussed to ease the traffic flow on the M25, including extending the variable speed limits all the way round". It looks like something similar is now coming to fruition. I cannot believe that someone, somewhere up there in their tower of power, wants to downgrade the motorways in this fashion. Surely the whole idea is to get the traffic moving - not to impose draconian speed limits enforced by the dreaded cameras, which, as most people suspect, are purely an instrument of revenue, anyway, despite all the denials and the grand term "safety cameras". All I can say (in true taxi driver fashion) is "Gawd `elp us guv`nor!"

Most of the congestion on motorways is actually caused by heavy lorries. A trip down the M1 usually means a drive on a two lane road with the third lane full of heavy lorries driving with their cruise controls set. When one lorry approaches another with a closing speed of about half a mile per hour he pulls out to overtake, still at half a mile per hour, and reduces the mtorway around him to one lane for anything up to five minutes. Politicians, of course, like to blame the car for the problems because the road haulage lobby is rich and powerful and they don't want to upset them. Surely the real solution to congestion, pollution etc is to force the road hauliers to invest in rail freight and give all three lanes back to passenger vehicles and vans of a size suitable for local delivery.

Re. my previous post and the one from Michael Rawlinson, I believe that lorries (or "trucks" - for our friends across the pond!) should be confined to lane one on all motorways, especially small, two-lane ones, such as the M26 in Kent, which, of necessity, I also have to use a lot, following on from the dreaded M25 on the way back to my home territory, thence on to the M20. Being called a "motorway" is a bit of a joke, it having only two lanes, no lighting and no information gantry signs. Most lorries (usually foreigners) are nothing but a menace on this stretch, especially coast-bound, as there is a very long, deceiving, upward slope and, almost invariably at some point, one lorry will suddenly pull out to try to overtake another with a speed differential of about 5 m.p.h; (even though it must be perfectly obvious that there are faster vehicles coming up from the rear in the one-and-only outside lane) with the slower vehicle probably initially only doing about 45 - 50 m.p.h. and this obviously instantly blocks both lanes for faster-moving traffic. Both lorries usually start to run out of steam as they negotiate the slope, and eventually end up running parallel with each other at a comparatively low speed with neither driver apparently wanting to give up their little contest and a queue of irate car drivers dawdling along behind. They might just as well stay in lane one, in convoy, and not inconvenience other road users. It smacks, to me, for the most part, of just shear bloody-mindedness.