Lancashire-Yorkshire Motorway
Liverpool to North Cave
For most of the north of England, the M62 is a lifeline. It is the nearest that Britain has to a coast-to-coast motorway, linking Liverpool with Hull, more or less, and it is the motorway that has evolved and shifted its route more than any other.
The headlines shout about traffic lights on motorways to ease congestion. How can that work? And is it even news?
Motorways used to be really simple. Now they have electronic signals, variable speed limits, emergency lay-bys, part-time hard shoulders... Just what is so smart about Smart Motorways?
If you've ever been on the M62 across the Pennines, you'll know the one. It's the huge arched bridge 120ft above the road. And this is what it's like when you're standing on top of it!
Those last few miles of the M1 east of Leeds were completed in 1999. It looks for the most part like a fairly average piece of road, but one of the project's engineers describes some of the challenges that were faced.
There's almost no evidence of Liverpool's 1960's plans for an inner ring road on the ground - but the motorway that never materialised would have been astonishing. The full details on the route, and the missing part the M62, are here.
What might it have been like to stand in one spot and witness the arrival, and the uncertainty, of plans for an urban motorway in West London?
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.
Thousands of vehicles travel the M6 between the M56 and M62 each day. They all cross the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, and the bridge that carries them is notorious from travel reports nationwide. But what does it actually look like from the ground?
