London-Birmingham Motorway Nears Completion

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28979, 21 August 1959, Page 16

London-Birmingham Motorway Nears Completion

[From the London Correspondent of “The Press’’]

LONDON, putting two giant swathes through forest, crop and pasture land for 75 miles between the north fringes of London and the approaches to Birmingham are the twin, three-lane carriageways of the London-Birmingham motorway, now nearing completion. About half way along its route, over the door of one of the contractors’ buildings, there is a sign which reads: “71st contract week.” A sign on the inside reminds the departing visitor: “12 weeks to go.”

Such reminders of the urgency of the project reflect the energy with which the job is being done and the timetabled, almost military nature of the work. They reflect the importance which the British Ministry of Transport attaches to the immediate, if long overdue improvement of Britain's road system which for years now

has steadily become more and more clogged, and at times completely choked with the ever- ' increasing volume of traffic. Faster and Safer [ At last commercial operators 'and private motorists can look forward to having in a few monjhs an adequate, modern road that will unstop the bottlenecks, that will be faster and safer, eschewing obstructive towns, a road that instead of following ancient cart tracks sweeps across the country ■through cuttings and over embankments and viaducts with the same grand manner that the railways were built a century ago. Appropriately, it runs roughly parallel in course and tradition, if not in scale, to Watling Street that has carried traffic to the north since Roman- times. I The story of the motorway is a spectacular one. The cost is £22 j million. The construction will be

finished by the end of October, 19 months after the official inauguration. The contractors, John Laing and Company for the northern 55 miles, and Messrs Tarmac Civil Engineering Ltd., for the southern section, faced a prodigious earthmoving job during the dreadful summer of 1958. In all, 14 million cubic yards of soil were excavated —more than'three times as much earth as had to be shifted in the extension of Rongotai airport. On the northern section alone 73 scrapers and 150 excavators were used; the supply of 6 million gallons of fuel oil to plant spread over 55 miles and working to weekly schedules is no mean feat in itself. The driver can look forward to

11 an entirely new kind of motoring I in Britain. To begin with, the road is designed for 75-miles-an-hour driving, but there will be no speed limit. The surface will give him the smoothest ride he has experi.lenced, for it will be the flatest i road in Britain. Messrs Tarmac. J who specially built a machine to ’finish the concrete surface, are I very proud of their “Q factor,” a mysterious way of telling how much, or how little, the surface departs from billiard-table flati ness. Their part of the road is laid in 11-in thick reinforced con- , Crete. 17 miles of it in two car- ’ riageways, each 38ft wide. The surface is slightly roughened to prevent skidding but deviations from •la truly flat running surface are claimed to be negligible. Laings’ section is over country which required more filling and their road is more pliant to allow for settling: 14in of dry lean, rolled concrete, 2Jin of asphalt

base and an asphalt wearing course of IJin for 55 miles. The motorway has meant the building of no fewer than 172 bridges to take it over canals, rivers, railways and other roads, or to take other roads over it. Since the road has sliced through open country (it has displaced a farmhouse and a shed or two) and has divided many farms, tunnels or bridges for stock and farm vehicles had to be built.

Emergency Telephone There are only a dozen places at which the motorist can join or leave the motorway. If he breaks down he has his only excuse for stopping, he must get his vehicle on to the hard shoulder at the side and he will never be more than half a mile from an emergency telephone to summon help from a patrol. At five points, at 12-mile intervals, he will have the chance to

stop at a service area. These are five-acre circles, bisected by the road with parking areas, garages, transport cafes, restaurants, telephones and picnic sites duplicated on each side. He will learn a new language and talk about slip roads, speed-up lanes and elevated gyratory islands. He will have to know what these are or he may never get on to the motorway at all.

At the London end he will approach the motorway over greatly improved access roads; along the way he will have to learn how to get on and off the side roads without tangling with the other high or higher-speed traffic (the engineers have their reservations about accidents with unskilled or unwary motorists in the early stages); and at the northern end he will run off on the spur to Birmingham or join the normal road to the north in the knowledge that eventually the motorway will continue like that all the way to Yorkshire.