Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Also, if I can open a bank account on your banking app, I should be able to close it without visiting a branch.

I got a lot of stick for that at the time!

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.

The bus lane is long gone now, but the traffic jams aren't because the motorway still narrows down. Yesterday I published the first of a two-part series uncovering the secrets of the M4 between Chiswick and Langley, home to this unfixable bottleneck. 4/4 roadsorguk.substack.com/p/the-foreve...

Black and white photograph showing a view along the Great West Road from above, with an unfinished motorway being built above the road and between industrial and suburban buildings.

Why does the M4 do that? There is a reason, and it involves engineers who had never designed a motorway before, a government Ministry that wasn't asking the right questions, and a project that was so full of experiments that one of its bold new ideas was bound to backfire. 3/4

Everyone had an opinion, but not many considered how it was able to exist. The third lane of the M4, you see, is kind of redundant - the motorway eventually narrows down from three lanes to two, and the awful queues that build up were the thing the bus lane was meant to bypass. 2/4

Photograph of a motorway, seen from a bridge, with three lanes of traffic heading away from the camera. Two are open to general traffic but the right-hand lane is coloured red and marked as a bus lane. A blue and yellow "Megabus" is travelling in the bus lane.

Do you remember the controversy around the M4 Bus Lane? It lived a short and eventful existence, stirring up more frustration than almost anything else on the roads. 1/4 🧵

Thank you for the repost!

Thank you! The video is amazing - and made me laugh that he clearly couldn't find any space in the car park at the end. He just pretends to park in one of the roadways.

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.

The M4 gets further in to London than any other motorway. It's a good road, except for the all-day jams where three lanes narrow to two. Why does it do that? Today I've published the first of two posts that try to find the answer. open.substack.com/pub/roadsorg...

Just published: the M4 into London was one of the UK's most innovative road projects when it opened. So why does it also contain a fatal flaw? In the first of two parts we take a deep dive into the highly experimental motorway through Brentford. #london #m4 open.substack.com/pub/roadsorg...

Motorways Dynamic, dreary – Britain has 2,300 miles of motorways, and the country would grind to a halt without these tarmac arteries. But they were part of a fast,...

MORE JAM TOMORROW MI5 is out *tomorrow*! In the meantime why not listen to @jasonhazeley.bsky.social and @roads.org.uk talk about why we’ll probably never build another motorway?

morejamtomorrow.com/episode/moto...

B/W image taken by Manchester Corporation's official photopgrapher in 1959 showing an old style road sign in Chortlton-cun-Hardy. It shows "ring road" ahead & to the A616, Ring Road left to the A6 Salford, A56 Bury and A62 Oldham, and right to the A34 to Cheadle and A6 to Stockport. A row of shops on the left include a branch of Mac Fisheries. Behind the sign a queue of people wait at a bus stop. It is winter as the trees are bare.

Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1959 captured by the #Manchester Corporation photographer. A lot of folk waiting for a bus, a branch of Mac Fisheries & a rather splendid pre-Worboys traffic sign. @showmeasign.online @roads.org.uk @sabre-roads.org.uk

(Pic. Manchester Archives)

Don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those before!

Everyone’s going to cut the corner at the bottom approaching the roundabout.

Ha! Why have I never used that?!

Zoom meeting - an Introduction to the SABRE #Maps Grid Calibrator. Hands on georeferencing maps using our toolsets.

If you weren't able to attend our recent Zoom session showing people how to georeference #maps using our Online Calibrator, then we've got it recorded and now available on our YouTube channel.

Don't forget to look there for other videos!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhO6...

Ugh. It’s “buse’s”, why does nobody get it right?

Please pass on my apologies for any part I had in this affront.

Motorways Dynamic, dreary – Britain has 2,300 miles of motorways, and the country would grind to a halt without these tarmac arteries. But they were part of a fast,...

Out today, a new episode of More Jam Tomorrow, a podcast about post-war British history, which happens to be about motorways and happens to include me. Have a listen! morejamtomorrow.com/episode/moto...

And of course if modern history is your thing, More Jam Tomorrow is well worth a subscription.

An absolute joy to talk motorways with @rostaylor.bsky.social - the podcast episode is below, have a listen!

Ah, OK - just a guess. Not that then!

Maybe some idea about rings now being more important to keep traffic out of Crit’air zones so they have to be more easy to identify? But that doesn’t mean green signs help in any way.

Completely weird. “Ring road” becomes its own class of road that’s more important than motorway 🤷🏻‍♂️

That's bizarre. What a weird decision. Is there a reason for it? Just confuses things from where I'm sitting.

The square “no entry” signs are quite a sight!

The steaming spires?

Is there any view of England *without* a branch of Costa now?

“C Ring Motorway” 😍

Ok, let’s do this🙄

We’ll start with an explainer covering:

🕒What is a 15-minute city
🏫What on Earth is going on with Oxford
👽Where the conspiracy theories have come from

And then we’ll look at the Telegraph article

🧵
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