View west from Marsh Lane to Sandy Lane, 14 February 1997
View west from Marsh Lane to Sandy Lane (see all photos of the same view)
Marsh Lane bridge is now in use. At the very bottom of the picture, work on grading the road bed is still at an early stage: within the last three months, the old course of Marsh Lane was blocking work on this part of the route, so plant is now on site to catch up and link together the sections of motorway on each side of the bridge.
Structure 16 (Sandy Lane overbridge)
Structure 17 (Marsh Lane overbridge)
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...
Croydon Ring Road
Common sense suggests that you shouldn't be able to spend so much money on heavy engineering and end up with such a terrible road system.
