West Midlands
Skid Risk, Accident, Fog 10 March 2025
For the first time, we can share pictures of the pioneering experiment that lit up the Worcestershire countryside with enormous signs 61 years ago.
Routes
M6 Hanchurch-Lymm
One of the longest lengths of motorway to open in one go, this book celebrates the opening of the M6 from the Potteries to the North West.
Routes
Tags
Sorry, wrong number 03 May 2024
Road numbering is a system with clear rules. What happens when the people responsible for numbering roads don't follow them?
The importance of being loopy 23 August 2018
Redditch is home to something extraordinary. Something big, and absurd, and noticed by almost nobody. Redditch has a cloverleaf interchange.
Tags
The zombie motorway rises again 07 June 2018
It's been on the cards since the 1920s. Is the Western Orbital Motorway now finally going to happen?
The bright lights of Coventry 01 November 2017
Coventry is home to the UK's only fully electronic road signs. Will they catch on?
Routes
Tags
Coventry Ring Road
The best ring road in the world? Possibly. The most frightening? Yes.
Routes
Tags
Tours
What's new
The road that made no sense
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.
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.
Have you seen...
Liverpool Inner Motorway
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.
