One key part of Highways England's expanded programme of road improvements is the conversion of large parts of the English motorway network to operate as Smart Motorways. This is intended to increase capacity and reduce delays without expensive conventional widening works. Many of the earlier Active Traffic Management and Managed Motorway schemes operate slightly differently - with, for example, part-time hard shoulder running, "through junction running" and so on - and there is an aspiration that work will be done to further upgrade these to make Smart Motorways across England operate in a consistent way.
The expectation is that, in little more than the next decade, most or all parts of the M1, M3, M4, M5 and M6 will be upgraded to Smart Motorway.
There's more information about the features of an upgraded road in CBRD's Smart Motorways article.
