In and out of a sixties New Town
Basingstoke is one of the UK's sixties New Towns - whole new urban areas planned and built back when we thought the car was king. That means it has a network of urban roads that are unlike anything in most UK towns, including one right through, and under, the town centre.
Back on 4 January 2008 we took a spin around the town to see its expressway ring road, Ringway, and to pass through the middle on Churchill Way. This looping journey starts and ends at Black Dam Roundabout in the south east of town. In the years since then the town hasn't changed hugely but its roads do look different - how many differences can you spot?
Map extract from OS Opendata 1:250,000 Scale Colour Raster under the Open Government Licence 3.0.
What's new
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.
Hello, here's my ridiculous side project
An introduction to what I write, and why I write it, and where my strange new road sign simulator fits in to all this.
Have you seen...
M1 under construction
Pictures taken as the first section of the M1 was being built in 1958-9, with all its unique architecture still under construction.
