Where is it?
M58 junction 5, the main junction for the new town of Skelmersdale from Liverpool's northern radial motorway, the M58.
It was nominated by Paul Berry.
What's wrong with it?
Take a look. It's what you'd get if you took a bag full of all the exciting junction elements you liked best and then tipped them out randomly all over the floor.
There's a pair of loop ramps that get M58 traffic to and from the A577 in the wrong direction, there's the half-roundabout thing south of the M58, and there's the sliproad that's an unclassified road for most of its length. There's the fact that the majority of movements involve doing a large lazy circuit of the round bit at the bottom. I'd like to write more but every time I look at the diagram I just start to weep uncontrollably.
Why is it wrong?
Who knows. The best excuse I've heard so far was that the M58 here was originally an A-road, built with Skelmersdale and then absorbed into the M58 route. As far as I'm concerned this goes no distance at all to explain why, to get from eastbound to northbound, I have to complete a figure of 8, or why there's some very unnecessary conflict created between the loops on the M58.
One person who worked on the upgrade scheme to turn this road into the M58 said, with a sigh, that it was a junction designed by an architect. Old maps show that, once upon a time, a useful sliproad existed from westbound to northbound that was removed for reasons unknown. It seems that, like the rest of Skelmersdale's road network, this is an experiment that went wrong.
What would be better?
Well, let me see. I think the first thing on the list has to be levelling the entire thing and starting again. There's so little traffic on any of the roads concerned that you might as well install a mini-roundabout with peak time traffic lights and have done with it: at least it would provide a direct left-turn off the M58. Ideally though, a simple roundabout interchange would be installed, which is really what should have been here right from the start.
Right to reply
I disagree. "Give way" is a specific instruction and a junction marked with a give way line is different to a merge, which is what you encounter where you enter a motorway from a sliproad. A give way sign would be the wrong instruction.
Learners can practice merging in to 70mph roads on many A-roads, and are given guidance on motorway driving. People from other countries will have seen motorways before. Neither requires a give way sign which would, in any case, be the wrong instruction.
I have seen give way signs on foreign motorways which I always think look a little disconcerting - as though one is expected to stop if there's no suitable gap which is as you say different to a slip road merge!
Give way isnt the same as stop! Surely its common sense that when joining a motorway you have to give way to traffic on the motorway? I will be honest that whenever possible I would move to the right when on the motorway to let traffic join. But its not always possible, look at the short slip roads at junction 34 on the M6 for instance.
Learners are now allowed on Motorways with an approved instructor (since June 2018), so I would imagine most new learners do get some motorway practice. There's also the Passplus programme, and of course many A-roads are motorways in all but name.
Thats a new one on me. I was under the impression that the only learner drivers allowed on motorways are HGV/LGV drivers. And as I said earlier the government have been talking about making motorway driving compulsory, but there are a lot of places in the UK without motorways. And how on earth would people in the highland and islands of Scotland get on if motorway driving was made compulsory?
Well there should be! The reason I say that is of course because motorway driving isnt included in the driving test, and of course what about visitors from overseas?