M898

This tiny little spur is the highest numbered motorway in the UK. It connects the Erskine Bridge to the motorway network at the M8, and that's it.

It's a motorway designed and built in the earlier part of Scotland's motorway programme, and so it was designed to a set of standards that allowed less heavily-used routes to be built without hard shoulders and some other concessions. That sort of route would have emergency lay-bys at regular intervals instead, but at one mile in length, it's too short to have those either, so really it's just a dual carriageway with delusions of grandeur.

Its most impressive point, the three-level free flowing interchange with the M8, is less impressive when you realise its sliproads are all only one lane wide! When the motorway first opened each sliproad had two narrow lanes and no hard shoulder, which made it unwise to actually attempt overtaking, so it's for the best that the paintwork has been revised and the number of lanes reduced.

The motorway is, in fact, so short that by the time the sliproads have come together to form the mainline, you're already passing the direction signs for the terminus.

As of mid-2006, the Erskine Bridge tolls have been removed and the crossing is free, which means that the motorway's northern terminus, Toll Plaza Interchange, is no longer very appropriately named.

Start

Erskine

End

Erskine Bridge

Passes

None

Connects to

M8

Length

1 mile

Click a section name to see its full details, or click a map symbol on the right to see all motorways opened in that year.

Completed Name Start End
Southbar - Erskine M8 J30 Craigton J1 Toll Plaza Chronology map for 1970

Exit list

Symbols and conventions are explained in the key to exit lists. You can click any junction to see its full details.

Junction   Northbound               Southbound  
1 Dumbarton
Duntocher
Erskine Bridge
A898
Erskine
A726




B815
NORTH
A898




A726
N/A
LanesLanesLanesLanes Signs LanesLanesLanesLanes Signs
1 mile, 2 lanes 1 mile, 2 lanes
M8 J30 N/A M8




SOUTH
M8


Greenock M8 Link
Paisley
Glasgow Airport
M8 Link
LanesLanesLanesLanes LanesLanesLanesLanes
Routes

Picture credits

With thanks to John for information on this page.

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Harry Yeadon

A civil engineer, working principally in the North West of England, responsible for many of the area's motorways.

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