Drivers face a ‘nightmare’ on motorways across Britain during the summer holidays as they endure more than 220 miles of roadworks.
Motorists going on trips will be delayed by work over stretches between ten and 17 miles long on the M1, M3, M4, M5, M6, M20, M25 and M27 over the coming weeks.
Average speed checks of 50mph have been imposed on sections of the network while National Highways adds more than 130 emergency areas to smart motorways.
Families travelling on the M1 face 11 miles of works between Luton and Milton Keynes and another ten miles near Leeds for a new central reservation to be built.
The majority of works form part of a £390million scheme for more emergency refuge areas in sections of all-lane running smart motorways, reported The Times.
Smart motorways use the hard shoulder as a permanent live traffic lane, but were criticised for being opened without enough stopping areas – with safety fears raised following fatal incidents in which vehicles stopped in live lanes were hit from behind.
A map shows areas where delays are expected on motorways this summer due to roadworks
Heavy traffic in both directions on the M25 motorway near Egham in Surrey on Saturday
And motorists now face 50mph average speed checks in areas where the inside lane has been coned off for a new refuge area to be constructed.
AA president Edmund King told the newspaper: ‘It’s a nightmare for drivers.
‘Of course we support putting in new emergency areas which, technically, should make smart motorways safer.
‘But we did argue, from the start, that they shouldn’t open without the adequate number of areas anyway.’
He added that ‘in some places it doesn’t feel like’ there is a national speed limit of 70mph anymore, claiming people were instead focusing on their speedometer, rather than the road ahead.
But Duncan Smith, executive director of operations at National Highways, told MailOnline: ‘Safety is our number one priority and the improvements we are making across the country will keep road users safer for the long term.
Holiday traffic congestion on the M4 near Bristol between junctions 19 and 20 last Friday
The M5 Avonmouth Bridge is pictured on Saturday. The RAC said the longest delays last weekend were predicted to have been on the M5 southbound between Bristol and Devon
‘While this work is underway, temporary speed limits are in place for the safety of our workers and road users. These will be removed when the emergency area retrofit programme is completed next March.
‘Where we can do it safely, we have begun to increase the speed limit to 60mph on the approach and exit of roadworks to help traffic move more freely.’
It comes after what the RAC said would be a ‘weekend of woe’ on the roads as many families headed on their holidays after the schools broke up for summer.
The motoring group predicted the second busiest summer weekend since 2015, with airports and ports braced for their busiest weekend of the year.
A total of 3.6million car journeys were expected to have taken place on Saturday, with another 2.9million trips on Sunday. The longest delays were predicted to have been on the M5 southbound between Bristol and Devon.
Holidaymakers head down the M1 motorway on Friday after schools broke up for summer
The RAC said the weekend – including trips taken on Friday – would be second only to 2022, during the hot summer that followed two years of lockdowns.
The Port of Dover in Kent also said it had been expecting its busiest weekend, with 11,000 tourist cars over the course of Saturday.
It comes after Department for Transport figures revealed that delays on England’s motorways and major A roads have reached record levels.
Journeys on the strategic road network (SRN) were delayed by an average of 10.6 seconds per vehicle per mile (spvpm) in the 12 months to the end of March, according to the data released on Saturday.
That is the longest in records dating to 2015 and is up from 9.5 spvpm in 2022/23, which was the same amount as the year to the end of February 2020, just before coronavirus travel restrictions began.
The worst areas for congestion during last weekend’s summer getaway, according to the RAC
Data on planned getaways for last weekend shows how it was the second busiest since 2015
The figures are based on average delays compared with free-flow figures across all 24 hours in a day, so do not reflect the impact of congestion at peak periods.
In 2023, the major road with the longest delays was the A2270 near Eastbourne, East Sussex, at 179.3 spvpm.
The M6 Toll road in the Midlands, which costs £9.70 for a car completing the full route, had the shortest average delay at 2.7 spvpm.
