M25 Madness

[Millay]

oh ok... luckilly i infrequently travel on the m25 well never nowadays...

[Charlie_Bubble]

I drive on possibly the worst stretch of the M25 to work and back every day. Junction 11 near Woking (Start of the widening/Terminal 5 roadworks) to junction 15 turnoff for Heathrow (M4, End of the works). This stretch of the M25, along with a few other sections, is in a different class from all other motorways and no normal rules of driving work.

It's a nice idea that every one drives at a steady pace and makes progress, but when you see the volume of traffic on this stretch you can bin that notion. When you come down the on-ramp and see 4 lanes of solid traffic not moving an inch most mornings, you're never going to be able to do that kind of thing and this lasts the whole 10 miles or so, save for a few streches a couple hundred metres long.

The main problem is that this section has so many major junctions on it where people try to stay in the fast lane as long as possible when exiting and get into the fast lane as soon as possible when joining. Meaning they have to weave across all the lanes in a very short space of time, making everyone else have to brake and allow them.

It actually moved a lot quicker than normal when they had the clockwise contraflow of 2 lanes, because it stopped people being able to join those 2 lanes, so the kept a steady pace, apart from when there was an accident.

After almost 4 years of doing this journey I've evolved a certain set of habits/tactics/strategies, call them what you will, for doing this journey and they do take time off the journey when it's bad, but basically, if you can avoid this stretch at rush hour times, you should.

[BBKing]

The M25 was only one of the four original London orbital motorways to be built - the other would have been through the metropolitan area (one in fact would have gone along the railway line 300 yards away from here, which would have improved the area no end (NOT). Unsurprisingly those were abandoned in the mid-1970s after public outcry - not many people in London would have lived far away from an eight-lane concrete elevated highway.

The result is that the M25 has all the traffic from these (a lot of people drive out to the M25 and go round rather than bludgen through traffic in town), plus it's both a local bypass for bits of London and towns like Leatherhead and Staines, and it has to be a through route for traffic from the North to the channel (and airports). Not surprising it gets a bit snarled up from time to time.

[Off topic a bit]
The history of the abortive motorways is fascinating - there's evidence of bits of land being left for them until quite recently, and redevelopment being done around where they would go. Further reading follows:

http://www.urban75.org/brixton/features/barrier.html
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringway2/
http://www.btinternet.com/~roads/lon_mway/index.html

There's a rather unpleasant development in Eltham where there's a suspiciously wide gap, too - see if you can spot it:

Aerial view

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Xaccers

I believe that when it was first completed, it already needed more lanes then they had built!

Actually when it was designed the planners said they needed to build a 4 lane road. The govt. to save money built three lanes, of course it is much much more expensive to widen 3-4 than it would have been to build 4 in the first place. And virtually impossible in parts where bridges etc need replacing.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

Actually when it was designed the planners said they needed to build a 4 lane road. The govt. to save money built three lanes, of course it is much much more expensive to widen 3-4 than it would have been to build 4 in the first place. And virtually impossible in parts where bridges etc need replacing.

That was it! thanks for reminding me

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by BBKing

<snip>
There's a rather unpleasant development in Eltham where there's a suspiciously wide gap, too - see if you can spot it:

Aerial view

No I can't - care to share?

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

No I can't - care to share?

Is it top to bottom from where it says hotels and going through the leisure centre?

[BBKing]

Ian's got it - if you move the view north a bit you see where the A2 turns north towards the Blackwall Tunnel - the original plan as far as I can work out was for the main road to be north-south with the A2 crossing roughly at right-angles. There's rather an odd junction there that looks like it has more land than it needs.

The north-south road would have continued down through the gap towards the A20 and then swing round to the west.

Edit: Ah, I've found the original map:
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringway2/06.jpg