National emergency area retrofit – work set to start on M1 near Sheffield
Our area will be one of the next locations to have new emergency areas added to it as part of the National Emergency Area Retrofit.
The work is set to begin this month. National Highways is more than doubling the number of emergency areas on the M1 between junction 30 near Barlborough in Derbyshire and junction 31 at Aston in South Yorkshire, adding ten new emergency areas to the existing six.
On motorways that don’t have a permanent hard shoulder, emergency areas provide a place to stop in an emergency if drivers cannot exit the motorway or stop at a motorway service area. They are clearly signed at regular intervals along the motorway and have bright orange road surfaces to help identify them. At 100 metres long, they have plenty of space for even the largest lorry plus a recovery vehicle and they are equipped with emergency telephones linking directly to our control rooms to get help on the way quickly.
You can find out more about what to do if your vehicle breaks down on the motorway here: https://nationalhighways.co.uk/road-safety/breakdowns.
Work on the M1 between junctions 30 and 31 will start from Monday 15 January 2024 and is expected to last around a year. Work will be carried out Mondays to Fridays from 7am to 7pm. Some overnight and weekend work may be required, and this will be communicated in advance.
To help workers carry out the upgrade safely, the left-hand lane will be closed throughout construction. Lanes two, three and four will remain open with a 50mph speed limit in place.
All existing emergency areas on the M1 will remain open wherever possible throughout construction. At limited locations where it is necessary to temporarily close an emergency area, a new temporary emergency area will be provided nearby and clearly signed.
The upgrade is part of work to add more emergency areas to all lane running motorways across the country. National Highways is committed to building more than 150 new emergency areas over the duration of the second Road Investment Strategy, which runs between 2020 and 2025.
Several sections of the M1 are being upgraded as part of this programme of work. As well as this section, the nearby junction 32-35A section saw work start in June 2023, and work will start over the coming months on the adjacent junction 28-30 section in Derbyshire, as well as junctions 23A-25 in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire and junctions 16-19 in Northamptonshire. We will coordinate all these upgrades to work as efficiently as possible and keep disruption to a minimum.
National Highways are in regular contact with local authorities as our programme progresses, through coordinated collaborative meetings to minimise the impact of roadworks in the local area as much as possible. We will regularly publish information about the upgrade and the roadworks on our website at https://nationalhighways.co.uk/emergency-areas and details are also published on https://one.network
Through all the work we are doing we are determined to further reduce the number of casualties on our high-speed road network, to improve public confidence in driving on our motorways, and to continue to build and operate one of the safest and best performing road networks in the world.
