M50 Ross Motorway

Published on 27 June 2018
Front cover of the booklet published to mark the opening of the M50

Opened in 1960, the Ross Motorway (sometimes known as the Ross Spur and, more commonly, the M50) was one of the UK's very first motorways. 

The booklet published to commemorate its completion and opening is gloriously and unashamedly proud of this small but pleasant route, describing it as "one of the most beautiful roads in Britain".

Being so early in the 1960s motorway programme, the M50 was sometimes referred to as an experimental motorway, and this booklet describes not just the road that was built and opened, but also contains huge amounts of detail on the motorway programme in general, rules for motorway driving, the process of planning motorways, how route numbering works and even arrangements for gritting and salting it in winter.

Routes
M50
Tags

Add new comment

About text formats

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
All comments posted to Roads.org.uk are moderated before appearing online. Your comment won't be visible immediately.

In this section

What's new

The Ringways Map is here

The wait is over! The full map of the Ringways, London’s unbuilt urban motorway network, is now online. Not even the system's planners had anything like this.

Red, white and blue

Kent County Council is run by eurosceptic nationalists. So why are they putting EU flags on their road signs?

The sunlit uplands

On Saturday 31 May something historic happened. The Heads of the Valleys Road was finally complete.

Share this page

Have you seen...

M1 Architecture

The most unique motorway in Britain owes its identity to its fifties architecture. Much of it is in danger of being removed or irreperably altered. This page documents it in detail.

About this page

Published

Last updated