M6 Preston Bypass

Name
Preston Bypass
Opened
Route
Start point
Junction number at start: 29
Bamber Bridge
End point
Junction number at end: 32
Broughton

The Preston Bypass continued west from J32 to Broughton Interchange. That section is now part of M55.

Road scheme and chronology data is courtesy SABRE (where much of it was gathered by member Ross Spur), with additional data from the UK Motorway Archive, the Scottish Roads Archive and the Northern Ireland Roads Site.

In this section

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.

Share this page

Have you seen...

M6 Preston Bypass

The "Preston By-Pass" was Britain's first motorway, opened in 1958. These books show the road as it was on opening day and share some of the thrill of this pioneering project.