A406

A406

North Circular Road

Ealing to Beckton

The urban sprawl of the capital is immense and very badly served by roads, without many high-capacity routes linking its various districts to each other and to the wider world. In north London, there is at least the A406 North Circular Road.

Routes

North Circular Road

1960s plans to upgrade the North Circular Road to form one of London's motorway "Ringways" would have seen it change out of all recognition.

Routes

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.

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