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AA warning of Midland jams
Page 10
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• A spate of truck accidents has triggered a call for new congestion busting measures on West Midland motorways. The AA warns that accidents on the M6 and the M42 coupled with rising traffic volumes could soon cause daily gridlock across the region.
Last week there were 15mile tailbacks on the M42 after a truck shed its load of chicken carcasses near Solihull. On the M6 three HGV collisions between J10-14 on the same day brought rushhour traffic to a halt.
AA regional spokesman Simon Woodings says: "Unless we manage our traffic problems better in the future we will see more gridlock and it will become a weekly if not a daily thing. This is one of the busiest motorway hubs in Europe and it does not take much for the whole thing to grind to a halt."
Woodings believes that M25-style variable speed limits would smooth the flow of traffic along key stretches of motorway: Most of our motorways were designed in the seventies or eighties and can't cope with the amount of traffic they are dealing with today."
He hopes that a £40m package of traffic control due to be tested between J3A-7 of the M42 from 2004 will help—monitoring equipment will detect accidents and will automatically impose appropriate speed limits.