M27 Roadworks: What's Happening

This page was written in 2017, when the motorways across Hampshire were receiving investment in the form of many small, short-term projects.

The purpose of this page was to give you a layman's explanation of what all those projects were about and why they were taking so long, written by a layman, but explained better than the official announcements, which tended to be very 'smoke and mirrors' (and sometimes completely dishonest).

Unfortunately, what started as a genuine effort to explain why things are the way they are turned into a frustrating experience, as watching a few projects closely exposed just how many mistakes and strange decisions are made.

Most of those projects have finished now, and as the government have made it clear that (as of early 2023), they will not be investing in any infrastructure beyond the absolute minimum, there is no point maintaining a replacement page.

We will just go over some remaining questions:

How does the government's announcement affect the M27 smart motorway? / Is the M27 smart motorway scrapped?
Is the M27 smart motorway safe to use?
What is happening with the M3 smart motorway and at Winnall?
Why is there a speed limit on the M27 Hamble Bridge?
Why did the M27 speed cameras flash when I did nothing wrong?
What are all the grey boxes on the smart motorway for?
Why are there still road closures / lane closures now the M27 is finished?
What is happening with the M27's concrete surface at Eastleigh?
What is happening at M27 J8?
What is happening at M27 J9 and why has the exit been made shorter?
What is happening with the M27 J10 Welborne scheme?
Why did the M27 smart motorway finish at J11?
Why did the M27 smart motorway take so long to build?
Will there be even more roadworks?

How does the government's announcement affect the M27 smart motorway? Is the M27 smart motorway scrapped?

The government's announcement to stop building any new so-called 'smart motorways' has no impact on the M27, because it is already built.

They did say that the M27 would be receiving 'safety improvements' (more signs for its emergency lay-bys), but this has been announced several times already.

There is also talk of providing new emergency refuge areas, but this has been talked about for a while, and it's something they are reluctant to do because it will require a new construction contract and months of lane closures.

That last point is a problem, because the government's announcement was clear: they are no longer building smart motorways to save money. On that basis, they are going to be reluctant to start building more lay-bys, which will require considerable earthworks, especially seeing as all the easy places to build lay-bys already have them.

No matter how much some might want them to, the government are not going to rip up the existing smart motorways. Firstly because once the extra capacity is provided it's very difficult to take it away, and secondly because they don't believe there is an issue that justifies spending any money.

Is the M27 smart motorway safe to use?

Firstly, don't be confused into thinking that the government announced they wouldn't be building any smart motorways because they aren't safe. They didn't. What they said was that they wouldn't be spending any money on new smart motorways - because it's an opportunity to save money.

The situation regarding safety is unchanged. There's no point going over the arguments again because most people are already firm in their views and there is no point winding everyone up again.

All I will say is this: safety is based on three things:

Is the construction itself dangerous?
Is the road being operated efficiently?
Are people using it safely?

You can answer those questions yourself based on your existing prejudices.

The original M27 smart motorway work sign, which was removed when the project overran.

What is happening with the M3 smart motorway?

The M3 smart motorway was all drawn up and ready to be built. And then it got postponed to allow for a 'review', which ultimately saw the government say that they didn't want to spend the money on it. It's gone.

While the smart motorway project was postponed, the money was sitting around unused. Because of the way government accounting works, that money had to be spent, so it was decided to spend it on replacing the M3's central barrier, which would have to be done sooner or later anyway. The irony that replacing the barrier means temporarily turning it into a 'smart motorway' but without all the technology is not lost on me.

Quite how it took them a year to replace the M3's central barrier, I'm not sure. 15 years ago, it took 3 months to do exactly the same work on the M27, but that was done before the government spun off the responsibility for motorways into a private company that only seems to answer to itself.

There is an outstanding issue: putting aside whatever you think of smart motorways, the fact is that the M3 between J9 (Winnall) and J13 (Eastleigh) desperately needs both more capacity and safety improvements. The failed smart motorway scheme was, whether you agree with it or not, an effort to address those problems. What's going to replace it?

In scrapping the smart motorway scheme, the government have offered nothing else to address the congestion and safety issues on the M3. Sooner or later - probably after the next election - they'll have to come back to the table with a new idea. It will most likely involve 'technology' and be a smart motorway with a new name. Whatever it is, it will be disruptive.

Winnall Roundabout

All of this is not to be confused with the ongoing project to redirect the A34 away from Winnall Roundabout. Two new underpasses will allow the A34 to pass through the area at 50mph, while the horrific right-hand exit to the A33 will be closed and replaced by a separate, much more leisurely, road from Winnall to Kings Worthy.

This project has a few minor issues, but generally it's one of the best improvement schemes to be put forward for the south east's major road network for a long time - possibly since the Hindhead Tunnel.

This scheme should have been done 30 years ago, and has sat on the drawing board for a while. It was severely delayed to 2023, then 2024, but as predicted, the earliest possible start time is 2025.

Given that there is at least one more election between now and then, there's a good chance it will get the chop. If it eventually goes ahead, count yourself lucky and don't complain about the disruption.

Why is there a speed limit on the M27 Hamble Bridge?

In November 2022, there was a collision on the M27 eastbound which damaged the bridge parapet (railings). You can see the damage when you drive by.

On a normal motorway you would just put some cones around it and leave it be, but as the M27 doesn't have a hard shoulder any more, you need to have a full lane one closure.

No visible progress has been made. National Highways initially said a bespoke part had been ordered and would be fitted by February 2023. This was wrong. Then they said it would take until September 2023. Then they said they'd be removing the restrictions in October. Now they are saying that both parapets (railings) are degraded beyond repair, and at one point they said the repairs will take until summer 2024 (!!!). December 2023 seems more likely.

As for the speed limit on the M27 westbound, National Highways claimed that this is because the concrete barrier was damaged, but there was no visible damage and it's not supposed to break that easily anyway. I suggested at the time that somebody saw how easily the bridge was damaged, and panicked.

This is not a smart motorway issue as such: even if the road had been widened "properly", they still would have squezed four lanes over the bridge. Many motorway river bridges don't have hard shoulders, including the mighty Severn Bridge (since 1966) and Hampshire's very own Tipner Lake Bridge (since 1976). These things happen. But it is true that the more miles of smart motorway there are, the more likely it is that things like this will happen.

However, as they're now saying both parapets are in a terrible state, this really is something that should have been identified when the supposedly-amazing smart motorway was built just six months earlier. Those involved will say "not my job", and they'd be right, but it is disgraceful that inspecting the bridge railings wasn't included in the smart motorway works that they spent so long telling us would be amazing.

The whole situation is very odd: why are the lane closures and speed limits provided with fixed signs, when National Highways have just been gloating about how good all their new electronic signs are? What happens if they try to provide a contradictory speed limit on the electronic signs? Why are the 'national speed limit' signs on the westbound side both the wrong way round? Why is the lane closed on the left, when the regulations say it's much safer to close the lane on the right and have them all shuffle along? It all screams "panicked".

The Hamble Bridge has been under almost-constant roadworks since the smart motorway began in 2018. If you include the exit to the M3 and the barrier works, M27 J4-11 will have been under some-sort of restriction for seven years.

Why did the M27 speed cameras flash when I did nothing wrong?

This particular model of speed camera is well known for flashing randomly - it has been happening on smart motorways all over the country for a few years now. If you were doing nothing wrong, no ticket will be issued.

National Highways won't say why it happens (they deny that it happens at all), but I would guess that it's a system test.

What are all the grey boxes on the smart motorway for?

These are 'stopped vehicle detectors'. They are being introduced following the goverment's safety review, either to make smart motorways safe, or make them feel safer. It's not clear which - but National Highways seem to think they are the miracle cure that will make the public love them.

The detectors apparently have a 95% success rate at identifying stopped vehicles, which supposedly justifies the cutbacks on cameras and control room staff that have been made since hard shoulder running was first trialled in 2006.

They work by constantly rotating and scanning the road. It's not clear how long they will work for without maintenance, but given that National Highways are terrible at maintaning electronic signs, cameras or streetlights, you shouldn't expect the 95% figure to be true for too long. Still, National Highways believe that the problems with smart motorway technology can be solved with more technology, and who are we to question them?

One of the smart motorway construction construction daytime road closures that Highways England had previously said wouldn't happen.

Why are there still road closures / lane closures now the M27 is finished?

Welcome to the future. Now that the M27 has no hard shoulder, all regular maintenance like litter picking, grass cutting, changing light bulbs, inspecting bridges and inspecting and repairing all that new technology all has to be done with a lane closure, if not a full road closure.

There are good reasons for road closures too: people are so bad at driving that they cannot be trusted near roadworks without a full, reinforced, steel barrier. The number of roadworkers who get injured is not a laughing matter. As you can't set up the usual safety equipment for something that will only take a few hours, it's easier and safer to close the road for a bit.

Of course, "easier" might the key word there; most solutions to problems these days comes down to what's easiest for the contractor, as there is nobody keeping them in line. This business of closing motorways for a few days is a trick they've been learning from the railway, which is a totally different kettle of fish.

When is the M27 closed?

A series of weekend full closures of the M27 at J8 (Bursledon) had been planned for May 2023. At the time of writing, these have been postponed, with no new date announced.

When it happens, the flyover at J8 (Bursledon) will be closed in one direction and traffic will be diverted via the roundabout, which means squeezing down into one lane. (A wise idea would be to close the other entrances to the roundabout so that the flow is uninterrupted, but you can bet that won't happen - you'd be wise to avoid the whole area.)

For scheduled nighttime closures, you should check the National Highways Daily Closures Report, which is actually one of the most useful ideas they've had.

What is happening with the M27's concrete surface at Eastleigh?

Before the smart motorway works started, Highways England had said that the M27's awful concrete surface between J5 (Eastleigh) and J7 (Hedge End) didn't need to be replaced.

Then Boris Johnson intervened, and now they've been told that it does need replacing, in what he called "an infrastructure revolution". This was scheduled to start with minor works in February 2022, and take 18 months (the work, that is, not the revolution - the revolution is already over).

Because the M27 no longer has a hard shoulder, it will be impossible for them to do any work without closing any lanes. Fortunately we have become accustomed to lane closures on the M27 smart motorway, as there seems to have been some-sort of work on it ever since it was supposedly finished.

The work was expected to ramp up in the middle of 2023, but this has now been pushed back to 2024. As the whole project is entirely political, it does come somewhat down the whims of whoever is leading Downing Street this week, so it's best not to believe it's happening until it starts.

As part of the resurfacing, the brand new central barrier will have to be removed, and replaced with an even newer one. They will also be fixing the drainage, which apparently wasn't done during the major reconstruction just a few years ago.

What is happening at M27 J8?

There is a planned project to make the roundabout bigger and put traffic lights on it (wild idea, I know), to excuse all the new houses being built around Hedge End.

This work is not related to the problem with the two bridges above the roundabout falling down, which will require a lane closure on the flyover.

A delayed public inquiry was held in June 2022, but a year later it concluded that the project couldn't continue. This will most-likely come down to a minor technical issue that will be easily overcome, but for the time being the project is postponed.

I would say that we will see this back on the agenda very soon, but given all the shenanigans happening in politics at the moment, it's very likely that there will be a budget cut that will impact a project like this. An official government report classes the project as "at risk" of being cancelled.

Even so, this is a sticking plaster solution designed to support new development, and that's exactly the sort-of thing the current politicians seem to love, so I'd expect it to reappear sooner or later, probably with a heavily inflated price tag.

As for the worthiness of the scheme itself, it is insane that nobody has built a safe walking or cycling route between the supermarket at Bursledon and the new houses at Netley Hill. It's a 15 minute walk / 5 minute cycle and the only large supermarket in the area, and the journey is made impossible by of historic bad planning, meaning people have no option but to drive. Fixing that is a good thing for everybody.

About 5 years ago, there was a vision for this project that it would make M27 J8 the main exit for Southampton, which would take the strain off the M27's other overloaded roundabouts. At that point it involved all-sorts of widening of Bursledon Road, but it was then watered down by budgets cuts and I don't think that ambition exists thing any more. Even so, the new houses mean that there will be more traffic at Bursledon and this project claims to be about increasing capacity. They reckon they can do that by putting traffic lights on a roundabout. It's not like that has ever gone wrong.

What is happening at M27 J9?

The roadworks are finally just about finished. This was a Hampshire County Council project, and it over-ran, like everything does.

The aim was to support the development of Whiteley, by addressing its long-standing traffic and connectivity issues by making the roundabouts bigger and putting traffic lights on them: a trick that has been tried multiple times here already, but somehow they keep coming back to do it again, because it's the only idea anybody in highways ever has. (See also: Welborne just down the road.)

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this project is that, despite Highways England (as they were) and Hampshire County Council boasting about how well they were going to work together, how much they managed to butcher it. First they put gantries on the M27 that got the lane layout dangerously wrong, then rather than fix the signs they changed the lanes. Then they put lane designation signs on both sides of the M27 that get the arrows completely wrong (they say you can't turn left from the middle lane when other signs say you can) - these errors are currently still in place. Then Highways England told me they had to write "Fareham West" in full, despite the regulations making it clear that this is wrong, because Hampshire County Council told them to, at the exact same time that Hampshire County Council put up signs calling it "Fareham (W)". Consistency, eh?

Why has the exit for M27 J9 been made shorter?

Nobody knows. When asked, Highways England gave a rambling answer about how the original layout was "built a long time ago". They didn't seem to know why they were changing it, or why it was built like that.

My suspicion is this: smart motorways like the M27 are built using what's called a 'toolkit', where every layout is selected from a list of pre-existing designs, like building a Scalextric track.

The old layout at M27 J9, with the very long westbound exit, was specially crafted to suit what was needed at the time. Such precision was a fact of life in 1970s engineering, but it's not possible when you are designing everything with the online equivalent of cookie cutters. As a result, the reconstruction has turned the layout into something much more conventional.

That's my best guess. Technically, they are right that the reason for the old layout was that it was trying to accommodate a service station that was soon cancelled. But the long slip road wasn't doing any harm, and was proving extremely useful at managing the long queues that often build here. Having the queues spill directly onto the motorway is going to be extremely dangerous.

Of course, this wouldn't be the first time National Highways (or their many previous names) have accidentally created a queue that poses a danger to fast-flowing traffic. Not even close.

And yes, I can see the irony that as of October 2021 there is now a big campaign to provide more facilities for lorry drivers, and Hampshire County Council have themselves said they'd like to see more HGV parking in Hampshire, and yet as we speak National Highways haven't even finished bulldozing the site of what was supposed to be a service station. Even just that redundant bit of tarmac could have been used as emergency lorry parking, if they hadn't lazily dumped some massive gantry foundations in the middle of it.

Traffic being told to turn around after a collision on the smart motorway.

What is happening with the M27 J10 Welborne scheme?

As part of the 'environmentally-friendly' and 'active travel' housing that Buckland say they are planning for Welborne, incredibly, they have managed to convince the council to pay for them to have their own personal motorway junction. That increases the value of the houses, although it makes a mockery of the idea that the "beautiful garden village" is for anybody but people who drive everywhere.

Highways England were even willing to accommodate the construction as part of the smart motorway works. This would have kept the costs of building it very low (as the road was being dug up anyway). Unfortunately as the developer were kicking their heels, they managed to miss the deadline. This means the butchering of the junction had to be pushed back, causing much more disruption and costing much more.

That caused a stalemate, where the council refused to pay the extra costs, and the developer claimed they couldn't afford it. As always happens in these situations, the council blinked first: they have housing targets to meet, and can't risk the developer pulling the plug.

So the project was ready to go, then it was suspended, then it was back on and ready to go again. Now, in December 2023, they said there was another argument about money. It's pretty obvious that this will end with the public paying even more for the scheme (either directly or through a 'grant'), but first we have to go through the motions where the authorities pretend they won't bend over backwards to please Buckland Developments.

Building the new junction will almost-certainly require months of lane closures and a lengthy closure of the M27 mainline. You can dig a cut-and-cover tunnel under a motorway in a couple of nights, but given the consultants involved, they will somehow manage to convince the authorities that it will take about two weeks, no doubt charging per the hour.

As for the project itself, the long and the short of it is that if you drive from the M27 westbound towards Wickham, you used to be able to make that journey without stopping at all, and now you will have to drive through about four new roundabouts and several sets of traffic lights. These will offer lots of opportunities for wealthy developers to sell the land to drive thru coffee shops and drive thru burger bars. It's the green revolution we keep being promised.

Why is Welborne so badly designed?

I have absolutely no idea why Hampshire County Council decided it was acceptable for the motorway slip road to be turned into Welborne High Street, as if they can't see the forthcoming traffic and environmental chaos. It's also crazy how they keep calling it an "improvement scheme", without ever having to explain who benefits from the "improvement" (it's the developer). If it's not due to politics or money, it must be incompetence.

What tends to happen is that the complicated work gets outsourced to a large agency like Atkins, for whom a project like this is small change, so they will pass it to a junior member of staff and tell them to get it done as quickly as possible. That would explain the obsession with roundabouts - roundabouts are easy templates that you can basically copy from your last job, rather than spending your time working with something unique like the existing layout. The agency will then create a computer model to prove that their idea will work - of course they will, they're hardly going to tell their paymasters that the idea they've been paid to create is terrible! The authorities, who are too short-staffed to take an interest in the technicalities of it, will then take a quick glance at the traffic modelling and say "well if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for us". They will then dress it up with a couple of nonsense phrases like "building beautiful" and "supporting active travel", and send the message out that it's going to be a dream.

By the time the chaos ensues, it will be five years down the line and somebody else's job to fix it. A great example of that is literally next door at Whiteley: every couple of years the council has to come back, look at the congested roundabouts, and find a way to put more traffic lights on them.

I should stress that the approved signage strategy I saw contains a long list of technical errors that nobody with any experience in highways would have ignored. This makes you wonder who on earth has been examining this stuff.

Why did the M27 smart motorway finish at J11?

The M27 between J11 (Fareham) and J12 (Portsmouth) is one of the most congested parts of the M27, and one of the busiest 100 sections of motorway in the UK - ranking above almost all of the rest of the M27.

Understanding why it's not part of the smart motorway works means understanding the crazy timeline in which these things happen. Roughly, it was this:

1989-1991: Several studies highlight a need to improve the congestion and safety record of the M27 between J3 (Southampton Docks) and J4 (M3); and also between J11 (Fareham) and J12 (Portsmouth). These results are repeated in 2002.
2008: The two widening projects eventually begin, but both are done to a tight budget. J3-4 was originally designed to have variable speed limits (VSL), but this was removed at the last moment to save money on a few gantries. J11-12 would involve widening the uphill sides only - when I asked why, I was told it was because they had been commissioned to build climbing lanes, so that was all they would pay for.
Meanwhile: The Solent Transport Strategy proposes introducing active traffic management (ATM) to the M27. This would see electronic signs used to turn the hard shoulder into a running lane at certain times of the day. This was the government's new favourite way to widen motorways, after a successful trial on one suburban motorway.
2011: New government budget cuts. Plans are drawn up to provide variable speed limits (now called VMSL) only, for the M27 between J4 (M3) and J11 (Fareham), tying in to the two widening schemes. Though some documents, as late as 2013, say the scope is still J3-12.
2014: The post opening project evaluation (POPE) concludes that the M27 J11-12 scheme had made almost no impact on congestion or safety, and by some measures had made things worse. My own unscientific analysis would agree: the merge points create a lot of issues.
J3-4 was much more successful but would soon suffer from issues, especially with the almost-permanent queue to come off at J3.
2015: Active traffic management (now called DHS) is deemed a failure, and replaced by all lane running (ALR) which, in very limited trials, seemed to work.

Highways England commissions a study into whether the proposed J4-J11 scheme should be expanded into a J3-12. It says that including J3-4 and J11-12 in the smart motorway is "essential", with "significant benefits". Excluding them "would not be recommended", and apparently they had "full support" from the Network Delivery and Development Directorate (NDD). The study points out that 11-12 is the busiest part of the M27, and that the collision blackspot at the top of the hill needs to be addressed.

Detailed plans are drawn up for the newly expanded J3-12 scheme. VMSL would finally be introduced between J3 and J4, the section through J4 would be widened, the section through to J5 would be considerably widened, the long exit at J9 would be maintained, and 4 lanes with VMSL would continue all the way to the M275.
2018: Where did it all go wrong? By the time the scheme was presented at a public consultation, it had been massively cut back. The busiest sections around J3 and J12 were excluded again, and other sections were to be made narrower.

The official reason given was that J3-4 and J11-12 were already benefitting from the previous improvements, which goes against all the evidence. This suggests that the decision was made either to save face and avoid the embarassment of admitting that cutting the corner with those projects has backfired. The other possibility is that it was done to keep the costs under control - as the project was done on a very tight budget, and the extra widening proposed between J4 and J5 would have been expensive.

The brand new road, never used, being torn up (left, under the rubble).

Why did the M27 smart motorway take so long to build?

They could have got the road open by Spring 2021, if they'd have got their act together and stuck to the original plan.

This would still have been a delay, because it was originally scheduled to be commissioned in December 2020. The section between J4 (M3) and J5 (Eastleigh) was originally supposed to be finished in 2019.

So where did it all go wrong? It would be unfair not to let them have COVID as an excuse. Sure, they took advantage of the lower traffic levels to close extra lanes and carry out closures for longer, but they have also had to deal with disruption to their supply chains and social distancing in the copound.

But before COVID was even heard of, mistakes were being made.

Take a look at the abandoned road at M27 J9 (Whiteley). It was originally built for something that never opened and as a result it ends in a hedge. It hadn't been used for 43 years. It was going to be dug up as part of the smart motorway works.

For some reason that is impossible to decipher, as the smart motorway works began, their contractor decided to thoroughly refurbish this road, with a new surface and brand new markings. Even though it had never been used, and even though it was going to be dug up in a few months time. I have no idea why they did that, but this level of attention to detail gives you some idea why they aren't getting the actual work done on time.

And let's not mention the fact that between J5 (Eastleigh) and J7 (Hedge End), it took them 18 months to replace a steel central barrier with another steel central barrier. A task like that was done in a few months just 10 years ago. Most of this time was spend staring at a hole.

The reason for that particular delay was that the original plan to provide a new concrete barrier was, for some bizarre reason, impacted by Boris Johnson's announcement that the road needed to be resurfaced in the future, so instead they decided to stare at the hole for a few months and then put back the exact same model of barrier that was there originally.

They also haven't helped themselves with some of the ludicrous overengineering. Some of the new signs have absolutely massive structures holding them up, when a simple pole should have sufficed, and a pole would have required much simpler foundations that would have been much quicker to build. National Highways will say that they used a standard (massive) structure by default to save time having to assess each and every structure individually. That's the sort of excuse a child gives when they can't be bothered to do their homework.

Meanwhile, all of the signs and gantries placed approaching J9 (Whiteley) westbound are wrong - they reflect the old road layout, where there were only two lanes and both of them could be used for turning left. While the smart motorway scheme was plodding on, Hampshire County Council changed the road layout so that the right-hand lane is now for Whiteley only. They say that they told National Highways, but who knows?

Many other parts of the scheme were rushed or recycled, too. We know they cut corners on the road signs by simply replacing the text that was already there, without checking whether anything had changed in the last 40 years (it had, but never mind). When the Daily Echo talked about the new drainage, they heavily suggested that corners had been cut to save time and money. So with so many corners having been cut, it's a mystery as to what actually took so long.

Will there be even more roadworks?

Oh yes!

On this page we have discussed with issues with the concrete surface at Eastleigh and the butchering of M27 J10 by Buckland Developments, as well as the possibility of more "safety improvements" being made to the smart motorway (ie, 12 months of lane closures to provide an extra lay-by).

Meanwhile, most of the M27's bridges are now over 50 years old, and one-by-one they will need replacing. A few have been done in the last few years (you may remember the roadworks near Ower, Rownhams, Park Gate (several times) and Cosham (for all of eternity)); Bursledon is next on the list to be done, and the Hamble Bridge is scheduled for even more work in 2024.

Also, while the current government has begun a policy against investing in infrastructure, in order to provide new houses and retail parks, there will need to be minor improvement schemes. These will be developer-funded, bare minimum projects that are required to stop the new houses making things much worse, rather than to address any existing issues.

This begs a much bigger question: unless a new government decides to totally revolutionise how we travel (which is possible, but feels unlikely), sooner-or-later we will have to start providing capacity improvements again. The railways are being run into the ground so something will have to give. The longer we leave it, the messier the roadworks will be: it will be very difficult to squeeze any more capacity out of the M27 as the smart motorway project was basically about squeezing it as hard as possible.

There were feasibility studies looking into possible roadworks at M27 J2 (Ower) and J3 (M271) where, surprise surprise, the existing strategy of 'putting traffic lights on an existing roundabout" has only had a limited success. In the current climate, it's hard to see that anything will happen other than "make it a bigger roundabout", but that will cause just as much disruption as a useful project would, so be prepared.

We then need to talk about barriers. Current policy is that steel central barriers are out of date and need to be replaced by concrete barriers. That's what they're doing on the M3.

Because the M27 smart motorway was cut back from its original planned length, there are two more sections of steel barrier that were going to be replaced, but haven't been. These are between the slips at J4 (the M3), and between the slips at J11 (Fareham). There is currently no plan to replace those two sections of barrier, but it will need to be done soon enough, and seeing as they are both such short lengths, it really is poor that it wasn't done with the rest of it.

Elsewhere, pressure group Transport for the South East are promoting a scheme called "M27/M271/M275 smart motorways", which suggests they are already expecting the existing smart motorway to be extended.

There was also a councillor in the news complaining about the lack of access to the M27 eastbound from Chandlers Ford. I have always found this odd because it could be fixed incredibly easy. You just need to reverse the direction of one of the two slip roads for Bassett Avenue (called the S slip). You can bet this will never happen because the computer won't tell them to do it (it will recommend something much more complicated and disruptive, which will be something for you to look forward to one day).