View west from Marsh Lane to Sandy Lane, 10 January 1996
View west from Marsh Lane to Sandy Lane (see all photos of the same view)
Foundations for Marsh Lane bridge can be seen in the foreground; in the middle of the picture the barest start has been made on Marsh Farm bridge. Between there and Sandy Lane, in the distance, a first course of tarmac has been laid on one of the motorway carriageways.
Structure 17 (Marsh Lane overbridge)
Structure 17a (Marsh Farm 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...
Liverpool Inner Motorway
There's almost no evidence of Liverpool's 1960's plans for an inner ring road on the ground - but the motorway that never materialised would have been astonishing. The full details on the route, and the missing part the M62, are here.
