March 13th - M25 Shutdown: unpacking the weekend's traffic challenge
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In conversation with Jonathan Wade from National Highways, I discussed the unprecedented weekend closure of the M25, highlighting the project's necessity and its ramifications. Advice for affected travellers and a look into future closures were also shared, aiming to mitigate the impact.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. |
| 0:09.3 | It's Wednesday the 13th of March. |
| 0:12.5 | And that means just a couple of days before an historic event, which is that the M25, the London Orbital Motorway, which opened in January 1986, |
| 0:25.6 | is going to be closed for the entire weekend. First time that that has happened. And goodness, |
| 0:32.5 | well, it's going to be between junctions 10 and 11 in the southwestern quadrant of the motorway, one of the busiest |
| 0:40.2 | stretches of road anywhere really in Europe. So why is it happening and what's it going to mean? |
| 0:46.7 | Good questions, I think, for Jonathan Wade, who is senior project manager for National |
| 0:53.9 | Highways and he is also the lead for this particular |
| 0:57.8 | project. Welcome, Jonathan. Hi Simon, nice to talk to you. Well, you must have about the worst |
| 1:04.6 | job in the world. You couldn't be further more wrong actually. I joined this scheme to lead the project just a little over six years ago now. |
| 1:15.9 | And so I've watched it come up through the development, through the design, through the public consultation and now into construction. |
| 1:22.6 | And I have a great team of people to work with, a great environment to work out of, a huge amount of support. |
| 1:28.3 | So, and I like transport. I've always liked transport. |
| 1:33.3 | So in many respects, it's a brilliant job. I do accept, though, just for this coming weekend, it's going to be a little bit on the challenging side. |
| 1:42.3 | Well, yes, we all love transport, but some people would unkindly suggest that transport is being |
| 1:49.0 | impeded a little. We'll get on to that shortly. But tell us, first of all, what is at the heart of this project? |
| 1:55.0 | Because we all know that the M25 has had all sorts of problems. We know that it's a 1970s design, basically, and here we are |
| 2:04.9 | half a century on and things aren't going as well as they might. But it kind of staggers from one |
| 2:09.8 | day to the next, doesn't it? The M25 itself isn't so much of an issue. It's the junctions |
| 2:17.1 | where people either want to get onto it or off of it. |
| 2:20.3 | And the A3, of course, although the A3 is not a motorway, it's still a three-lane road. |
| 2:26.3 | The junction itself and the roundabout that forms the core of the junction. It's all got traffic lights on it. |
... |
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