England’s first motorway celebrates 60th birthday with ITS upgrade

Sixty years today, 2,300 drivers drove along an eight-mile section of road in England – the first motorway in the country. Opened in 1958, the Preston bypass – now part of the M6 - only had two lanes in each direction, with no safety barrier in the central reservation. There was also no technology – not even simple electronic signs. Highways England is pledging to celebrate the birthday by completing four upgrades on the M6 by spring 2022. The £900m project will add extra lanes and better technolog
December 5, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
Sixty years today, 2,300 drivers drove along an eight-mile section of road in England – the first motorway in the country.


Opened in 1958, the Preston bypass – now part of the M6 - only had two lanes in each direction, with no safety barrier in the central reservation.

There was also no technology – not even simple electronic signs.

8101 Highways England is pledging to celebrate the birthday by completing four upgrades on the M6 by spring 2022. The £900m project will add extra lanes and better technology to 60 miles of the motorway between Coventry and Wigan, the organisation says.

The first upgrade, a 20-mile stretch between Crewe and Knutsford in Cheshire, is due to be finished by spring 2019, and will have 258 electronic signs, 104 traffic sensors and 70 CCTV cameras.

The upgrades will involve converting the hard shoulder to a permanent extra lane to increase capacity by a third.

“Our motorways have changed massively over the past six decades and smart motorways could be just a glimpse of the technology transformation still to come,” says Andrew Jinks, smart motorway director at Highways England. “In 60 years’ time, driverless vehicles could be as commonplace as a car radio.”

The amount of traffic using England’s motorways has increased by almost two-thirds in the past 25 years alone, including more than double the number of vans, Highways England says.

Air Quality & Weather Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Trust is the key, says Cubic’s Crissy Ditmore
    August 7, 2019
    Trust is the key to encouraging people to take up shared mobility and MaaS services, thinks Cubic Transportation Systems’ Crissy Ditmore. She tells Adam Hill why sharing must be the way forward Crissy Ditmore is on the move. Director of strategy at Cubic Transportation Systems since September last year, she lives in Boise, Idaho, but doesn’t see a great deal of the city as she is “90% of the time on the road”. This is appropriate for someone whose business is working out how to get people from place to p
    Read More
  • UK council ‘budget cuts’ halt development of EV charging
    March 18, 2019
    More than 100 UK local authorities say they have no plans to increase their number of electric vehicle (EV) charging points. These findings have been revealed from freedom of information (FoI) requests submitted by the Liberal Democrats and shared with The Guardian newspaper. According to the report, Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat former energy and climate change secretary, says the lack of investment in charging points is due to “cuts to council budgets”. “Unless there is urgent action to tackle our out
    Read More
  • Highways England HQ now open
    March 20, 2015
    The new headquarters of Highways England, the company that will run motorways and major A roads, has been opened today by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin. The new company, which replaces the Highways Agency on 1 April, marks a step change in how England’s roads are maintained and managed and will be responsible for delivering more than US$22 billion of investment by 2021. The new company will have longer-term funding to be able to plan ahead and invest in skills and equipment to speed up essential wo
    Read More
  • BlackBerry’s Jeff Davis: ‘Hands off 5.9GHz!’
    September 25, 2019
    As a US Marine, BlackBerry’s Jeff Davis saw the world’s trouble spots. But much of his attention is now focused on what he sees as the ITS sector’s biggest issue: cybersecurity. Adam Hill finds out more Oh, I often feel I’m the dumbest guy in the room,” laughs Jeff Davis, senior director, connected transportation, at BlackBerry. It’s hard to credit this. Davis has a range of experience that sets him apart from most people in the ITS sector. He was in the US Marine Corps, with seven tours of duty, inclu
    Read More

Highlighted Content