View west from Leeds-Liverpool Canal underbridge to Sandy Lane, 20 July 1995
View west from Leeds-Liverpool Canal underbridge to Sandy Lane (see all photos of the same view)
The new bridge over the canal now has its deck in place, but is not yet in use for construction traffic. The temporary bridge on the left is still in situ, but will shortly be removed. On the right, one of the new embankment slopes has been grassed over, the first of the new motorway earthworks to be fully complete.
Structure 19 (Leeds-Liverpool Canal underbridge)
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.
