Motorway lighting on a carefully selected section of the M2 in Kent will be switched off between midnight and 5am in a move to reduce carbon emissions and light pollution, the Highways Agency has announced.
Lighting on the M2 between junctions 3 and 4 near Chatham will be switched off each night between midnight and 5am. This will start from 00:01hrs Thursday 7 May. The motorway junctions and their approaches will remain lit.
The site has an excellent safety record and a very low traffic flow between midnight and 5am, and has been chosen as the second site for the Highways Agency’s programme in the South East after careful assessment.
Jon Griffiths, Highways Agency Network Operations Director in the South East, said:
“We are looking for ways to reduce the carbon footprint of operating the motorway network and this is one step in that direction. This is the second of four sites where we are doing this in the South East, following a successful launch in the South West in March.
“We expect to achieve up to a 40 per cent saving in carbon emissions and energy use for each section of motorway where we do this, and local communities will benefit from reduced light pollution of the night sky.
“We have carefully chosen sites where the traffic flows are so low in the early hours that when taken together with the good safety record of the sites, there would be no case for installing new lighting if the decision was based on the overnight figures alone.”
Timing devices at the roadside will control when the lights switch off and on again. The Highways Agency’s Regional Control Centre for the South East can override the mechanism if needed.
