Re: Anyone looked up what a smart motorway is?
If you look at the POPEs for any completed scheme, it is compared against the forecast outcomes during planning stage, and then "Do Minimum" (i.e. any work that would have had to have happened anyway) is subtracted. Essentially a nice big evaluation of "Did Highways England achieve what they said they would" and as can be seen by reading any of them, they certainly aren't biased in favour of Highways England.
At no point does anyone compare traffic speed post construction against traffic speed during construction and claim it as a success of benefit. ORR and Transport Focus tend to get a bit pissed off if you do things like that.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/post-opening-project-evaluation-pope-of-major-schemes
Biting the hand that feeds IT
