Whatever happened to the M15?
May. 29th, 2008 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerToday was meant to be spent doing online research for my dissertation. And, sure enough, I found a few useful references - not too many, but then that confirms that my field of study is a hitherto neglected one and so almost anything I do is going to be original. Or possibly just so obvious that nobody's even bothered to write about it before.
In the midst of this though I suffered a massive bout of Online Distraction. One of my RSS feeds is things magazine, the paper version of which is very irregular these days (in schedule, I mean - I think it's still rectangular as and when it is published) but which provides a steady stream of, well, interesting things on its website. And one of today's stories was about the long history of plans for a new London airport in Essex. Now, that I'd heard of, but what piqued my interest was mention of the motorway planned to service it - the M12. And that led me to two wonderful time-wasting sites: Chris's British Road Directory and Pathetic Motorways.
CBRD is what it says on the tin - a detailed resource dedicated to our road network and how it got there. Want to learn how the road numbering scheme works? Or about how we got our current road signs? And speaking of signs, learn about Moto service stations and their astonishingly cack-handed non-standard signage. There are the mad schemes of the past, such as the idea to criss-cross London with 60-foot diameter multi-layer road tunnels. But the section most likely to elicit groans of recognition from beleaguered drivers is Bad Junctions, showcasing the worst examples of road planners' efforts to get the M thingy to join the A wotsit. I can certainly heartily endorse the inclusion of the A14/A14/A141 junction at Huntingdon (from the A14, you can go straight on to the A14, or turn left to join the... A14) and that appalling abortion that is the M11/A14/A428 junction outside Cambridge (to stay on the A14, you have to turn off it before it becomes the A428 and go round in circles). I'm sure others will find their favourites here too.
Also on CBRD: the history of the Ringways, a plan for concentric ring roads around London. Four of them, in fact, or five if you include very early plans for a ring motorway around what is pretty much now the Congestion Charge zone. Ever wondered why London is littered with odd little stubs of three-lane carriageway such as the A12 (ex A102(M)), the Westway and the ludicrous former M41 (the short stretch of motorway between Ladbroke Grove and Shepherd's Bush? They're all that was build of the proposed 'inner box' around central London. Little bits of Ringway 2 were built, which is why the North Circular becomes a mighty motorway around Walthamstow, whilst the M25 is a bodge of the northern part of Ringway 3 - built as the M16 - and the southern part of Ringway 4, with some added link roads; this is why the you have to negotiate a junction to stay on the M25 as it curves southwest through Kent.
Similar, but more specialised and with added sarcasm, is Pathetic Motorways. It's dedicated to our motorway network, or rather the bits of it that weren't built, shouldn't have been bothered with, or aren't motorways any more. Most interesting to me of the schemes listed is the M31, which would have linked M4, M3 and A3. Looking at the route map, it was evident that it would have skimmed just north of my home town of Woking; checking the junction plans, it would have driven right through Horsell Common and indeed directly over the spot where the Martians landed in War of the Worlds. I've often said that if the Martians invaded Woking today they'd be built over before having a chance to bolt together a Fighting Machine, and by the looks of things it might have been even truer than I thought.
Oh, and what did happen to the M15? Well, as noted above, the one mile of it that was built ended up as the so-how-come-this-bit-is-a-motorway? section of the North Circular. So now you know.
In the midst of this though I suffered a massive bout of Online Distraction. One of my RSS feeds is things magazine, the paper version of which is very irregular these days (in schedule, I mean - I think it's still rectangular as and when it is published) but which provides a steady stream of, well, interesting things on its website. And one of today's stories was about the long history of plans for a new London airport in Essex. Now, that I'd heard of, but what piqued my interest was mention of the motorway planned to service it - the M12. And that led me to two wonderful time-wasting sites: Chris's British Road Directory and Pathetic Motorways.
CBRD is what it says on the tin - a detailed resource dedicated to our road network and how it got there. Want to learn how the road numbering scheme works? Or about how we got our current road signs? And speaking of signs, learn about Moto service stations and their astonishingly cack-handed non-standard signage. There are the mad schemes of the past, such as the idea to criss-cross London with 60-foot diameter multi-layer road tunnels. But the section most likely to elicit groans of recognition from beleaguered drivers is Bad Junctions, showcasing the worst examples of road planners' efforts to get the M thingy to join the A wotsit. I can certainly heartily endorse the inclusion of the A14/A14/A141 junction at Huntingdon (from the A14, you can go straight on to the A14, or turn left to join the... A14) and that appalling abortion that is the M11/A14/A428 junction outside Cambridge (to stay on the A14, you have to turn off it before it becomes the A428 and go round in circles). I'm sure others will find their favourites here too.
Also on CBRD: the history of the Ringways, a plan for concentric ring roads around London. Four of them, in fact, or five if you include very early plans for a ring motorway around what is pretty much now the Congestion Charge zone. Ever wondered why London is littered with odd little stubs of three-lane carriageway such as the A12 (ex A102(M)), the Westway and the ludicrous former M41 (the short stretch of motorway between Ladbroke Grove and Shepherd's Bush? They're all that was build of the proposed 'inner box' around central London. Little bits of Ringway 2 were built, which is why the North Circular becomes a mighty motorway around Walthamstow, whilst the M25 is a bodge of the northern part of Ringway 3 - built as the M16 - and the southern part of Ringway 4, with some added link roads; this is why the you have to negotiate a junction to stay on the M25 as it curves southwest through Kent.
Similar, but more specialised and with added sarcasm, is Pathetic Motorways. It's dedicated to our motorway network, or rather the bits of it that weren't built, shouldn't have been bothered with, or aren't motorways any more. Most interesting to me of the schemes listed is the M31, which would have linked M4, M3 and A3. Looking at the route map, it was evident that it would have skimmed just north of my home town of Woking; checking the junction plans, it would have driven right through Horsell Common and indeed directly over the spot where the Martians landed in War of the Worlds. I've often said that if the Martians invaded Woking today they'd be built over before having a chance to bolt together a Fighting Machine, and by the looks of things it might have been even truer than I thought.
Oh, and what did happen to the M15? Well, as noted above, the one mile of it that was built ended up as the so-how-come-this-bit-is-a-motorway? section of the North Circular. So now you know.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 12:51 am (UTC)Fair enough. I never really understood that one.
M11/A14/A428
This one, on the other hand, I used to use twice a day to work and back. Never had any problems with it.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 08:56 am (UTC)Driving the other way though, unless you have your wits about you it's all too easy to forget that in order to stay on the A14 you have to leave the road, negotiate a cloverleaf and then run parallel to the A14 for a while before rejoining it. Otherwise you suddenly find yourself on the A428 heading for Bedford. Even after four years living in Cambridge I occasionally made that mistake, so heaven knows how many lorry drivers fresh from Harwich go astray.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 01:47 am (UTC)Underground suspended monorails! Squeeeee!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 08:56 am (UTC)