M271

M271

Southampton Dock Spur

Upton to Totton

The M271 shifts traffic around the west of Southampton, connecting the motorway to the western suburbs and the A33. It isn't a big job, and yet somehow the M271 gets it all wrong.

Routes

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.

Share this page

Have you seen...

Mixed Signals

During the 1960s the UK developed some of the most sophisticated - and strange - electronic variable message signs anywhere in the world. How? And, just as importantly... why?