m40.jpg
Image
Descriptive text
Aerial photograph of a new motorway crossing flat green countryside on an embankment. It bridges a canal and a railway, which run from the bottom of the picture towards the top, and there are patches of woodland between the green fields
Caption
The new M40 crosses a railway and a canal near King's Sutton, south of Banbury, in 1991.
Original size
1600×1078
What's new
The road that made no sense
It was the UK's only single-carriageway motorway, and twenty years ago it ceased to exist. This is the story of the strange fascination it held, and of my place in history.
The forever bottleneck, part 2
The second part of the story, where we learn why exactly the M4 gets narrower on the final approach to Europe’s biggest city.
The forever bottleneck, part 1
The M4 into London was one of the UK's earliest and most ambitious motorway projects. It was bold, pioneering... and almost instantly regretted.
Have you seen...
Sir James Drake
County Surveyor and Bridgemaster for Lancashire in the 1950s and 60s, Drake was instrumental in the motorway revolution.
