The M32 is a spur in to the centre of Bristol from the M4, entering the city from the north but actually signposted as the way in from all directions on the M4 and M5.
Its terrifically rubbish junction with the M4 is only the start of the traffic problems it suffers, and as the only purpose-built road from the motorway network to Bristol city centre it is heavily prone to congestion.
The road was originally just a couple of miles long, with its junctions numbered 19A and 19B to follow from its parent motorway's numbering. When it was granted an extension further into the city it gained its own numbering scheme.
It has the full checklist of urban motorway features, running through deep concrete-walled trenches, crossing viaducts above streets and houses, and passing through complex junctions with unlikely local roads and back streets joining its sliproads. It also has a junction for the wonderfully-named suburb of Fishponds.
The M32 was, apparently, meant to be one of two motorways entering Bristol: the other, a spur to the south of the city, would have left the M5 at junction 20, near Clevedon. Part of the Long Ashton Bypass is laid out with the intention that it would be widened to form part of that motorway route, and the dual carriageway approaching the Cumberland Basin one-way system in the city centre was designed to form its terminus. Both it and the M32 would have arrived in the city centre to meet the Inner Circuit Road, but Bristol's city centre motorway never materialised and neither did its southern spur.
Bristol City Council has proposed downgrading the M32 to an A-road and converting its hard shoulders to bus lanes, but the road is managed by Highways England who are not interested in such a scheme. Its motorway status is safe, for now.
