A49 underbridge, view west, 12 December 1997
A49 underbridge, view west (see all photos of the same view)
The unusual terminus of the motorway west of the M6 can be seen here, designed to allow for a future extension of the motorway to form a southern and western bypass for Preston. This never happened, and the land beyond the terminal roundabout is now increasingly heavily developed.
Structure 4/4a/4c (M6 interchange bridges)
Structure 5 (A49 underbridge)
A49 Wigan Road
M6 motorway
What's new
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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.
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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...
Operation Stack
If there's trouble crossing the Channel, you'll see the lorries queuing on the M20. What is Operation Stack? Why does it cause so much trouble? And why, more than twenty years after it started, are we still using it?
