What distinguishes any major highway – whether single or dual carriageway – from roads officially designated as “Expressways” or “Motorways”. TRD
The world’s biggest and best roads – Motorways, Autoroutes, Autobahns, Freeways and Expressways – are free of obstruction of any kind, so vehicles can flow onto them, flow along them and flow off them like a high-speed conveyor belt. There is zero contraflow or stopping at any point. Their use is restricted to authorised motor vehicles only.
The distinction between our dual carriageways and internationally recognised motorways/freeways etc is more than just multi-lane size and smoothness. There are crucial differences in the way ours are designed, how they are used, and the rules that should (and rules that don’t) apply to them.
Yes, we have an increasing number of dual carriageways, but only small parts of some of them even vaguely qualify as high-speed arterial roads, and none are true Freeways/Motorways.
Technically, most of ours are multi-lane one-way streets, which happen to have another one-way street running parallel in the opposite direction.
For a dual carriageway to properly qualify as an Expressway, all the following characteristics would have to be present. Consistently. No exceptions.
1. They would have to be “clearways”, with a certainty that no vehicle would stop on the road at any place or time for any reason whatsoever. To ensure this they would need to have hard shoulders throughout their length, and such hard shoulders would be reserved exclusively for vehicles to pull off the road and stop in emergency circumstances. No cyclists, no pedestrians or handcarts, no bust stops and certainly no kiosks! They need road reserve barriers to make them no-go zones for anything (!) other than vehicles.
2. They would have no same-level crossings of any kind, and no turnings to the right. None. All turnings to the left would have slip lanes for exit from or entry to the main stream. The slip lanes, too, would be clearways and exclusive of any other use or possible obstruction. Through-traffic must stay off them. They would be long enough to allow exiting vehicles to leave the main streams while still at ambient speed, and only when out-of-stream to start slowing down in preparation for a junction/turn. Similarly, slip lanes for vehicles entering the main streams would be long enough to allow them to accelerate up to ambient speed before filtering into the flow. Any vehicle not capable of achieving a reasonable speed in that distance would be prohibited.
3. In the main streams, all vehicles would travel in the left-hand lane at all times, except when overtaking or making room for an entering vehicle to filter in.
Clearly, if the design does not conform to points 1 and 2, then useage cannot conform to point 3. If any of those ingredients is missing the road is not an Expressway.
Meanwhile, we would do well to understand why Expressways work so well, and to the extent possible on all (!) the roads we have got, apply their principles: Go With The Flow. Keep Going. Keep Left. Or get Off.
