The M11 Motorway's Bridge Over Nothing... What's The Point?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 11 жов 2024
- #infrastructure #driving #M11 #motorway
Buy Us A Coffee - paypal.me/auto...
Find us on:
Twitter - @JonShenanigans
Facebook - Auto Shenanigans
Patreon:
/ autoshenanigans
Sign up for behind the scenes footage, access to live chats and more.
In this video, we look at a bridge that doesn't really do a lot. There's mention of the famous London ringways motorway project or scheme, so maybe that's got something to do with it, that's usually the case when it comes to main roads or motorways in London. In this case, it's the M11 motorway, not usually associated with being a London motorway but things weren't supposed to be this way...
"Lessons have been learned so such things will never be repeated" 🤣🤣🤣🤣
You recon
Cough 1 billion spent on planning for the LTC that has had its decision delayed again until next year....
We know how the public get scammed…the fanatics pay an ‘expert’ to say whatever they want, and the dummies (cannon fodder) believe them. Yay
They learned Alright.... to try it again somewhere else. 😂😂😂😂😂
Hmm. Seems its not just cold war tank tactics that could take lessons from recent world experience.
Welcome to England, where we start great proj
i wonder if such british projects take as much time as big governmental projects over here in Germany - massive increases in costs and downgrades to the original plans included.
@@t.kersten7695 no, that sounds like HS2!
I see what you did, th
More pilots than BA
Where we whinge we were once world leaders (rose coloured glasses about the past) yet when we try to start or build much needed infrastructure to give us quality things to keep up (eg high speed rail that every other major European country has) the tree of NIMBYs comes out.
1:04 Jon: Back to the studio
1:05 Jon: Thanks
It's exquisite filligree like this that makes this channel unbeatable.
Filigree is an underused word... Shame most people don't know what it means
@@MostlyLoveOfMusic 8-⌇
@@MostlyLoveOfMusic Indubitably
That was hilarious, yes, but the funniest thing about is imagining the planning that must have gone into it lol.
You will also get stuff like that on Map Men's channel
The editing on this channel is so underrated.
It's left a nice bit of park land below so maybe that's something.
We used to walk the dog there!
Indeed. It's much more navigable by foot than it would otherwise have been.
And thank goodness they didn't ruin London with the ringways.
I wonder if the M25 was one of them?
This bridge isn't "over nothing" as you can clearly walk underneath it. It's probably cheaper than an embankment.
it's so I can ride by bike under it on the way to marvel at other bits of post-industrial hinterland....
@@Tom_Hadleriirc the M25 is basically the bits of ringways that they did build before cancelling the project, as when they cancelled it they just connected together what they’d already made giving us the M25
"... never be repeated ..." What a quaint thought, eh? We never learn here in the UK. Great video Jon! 🙂
did you notice Jon nearly crack, check the poorly concealed smirk!
@@ynot6473 Oh yes I did. Jon is all about the subtle stuff.
There's something called the sunk costs fallacy. You'll never get back what you've already spent but that's a lot less than fulfilling the project. So it really is cheaper to cancel. Now... what did I do with HS2..
@@wrichard11 There's also something called the "Knocking down the half-assed bodge to build it properly" cost fallacy. It's not like the problems that HS2 solves are going to magically disappear.
They just said "Fuck it, we're not getting re-elected, so let's make a huge fucking mess for the next government."
@@justaguycalledjosh Cuts 20 minutes off a trip to Birmingham? Have they not heard of Zoom?
"big infrastructure projects that get started but never completed".....Hmmm. Yeah. seems like we learned that one (HS2 )
How many infrastructure projects have been canceled when someone goes "we are running a little short of money so we have to cut this down and only build the cheap bits"?
Loved the old movie tone office clip 😅😅😅😅
Yep, it has the exact "RP-on-a-stick" sound everything had back then.
I thought it was Mr Cholmondley Warner.
@@flipper2392 "women know your place!"
@@paulknight5018 And your limitations. 😉
I believe the original plan for the unbuilt section was also to be a raised motorway like the M4 in West London. In the end they "cut" the A12 extension thru to Hackney, but still demolished a lot of houses. I actually like the fact that this slip road was left raised, so the ground to the River Roding can be accessed by wildlife and pedestrians. Better than inaccessible "islands".
Yeah, the M11 was supposed to run above a 6 lane A12, an extension to the Eastern Avenue, at certain points traffic could switch between the two roads. The A12 from Wanstead to Bow is still basically a motorway, and some sections of that were originally (the A102 (M)) .
They should have made free flowing slip roads from the M11 onto the A12 westbound, bypassing the North Circular and Redbridge Roundabout
@@Kmc1qlAq8Dt6tpVC the bend at hackney wick is decidedly not motorway spec, but the rest is a high quality and capacity dual carriageway.
@@soyebaswat5382 that's because that was built in the sixties, some thirty years before the wanstead to Stratford section.
Etudiant d la peripherique du Paris
The "one moment chaps .." splice was inspired. Keeping it fresh.
Nice video John - but I would have thought that the 'Bridge Over Nothing' was built because they (whoever they are) knew that you would want to make a video about it!
I used to live just up the road from this bit of the M11. Made for a relatively quiet place to walk on a nice day.
“Of course, lessons have been learnt “Eloquent sarcasm at its best. Plus excellent editing too. Thanks Jon!
When I was a boy (rather a long time ago now) I was keen on becoming a civil engineer and luckily my sisters friends dad was the lighting engineer responsible for the lighting for J4. He took me on a trip there back in the day ( let me turn all the lights on and off😀) and showed me the plans for the completed junction! Well they were amazing! if built would have certainly challenged spaghetti junction in terms of scale and complexity. M12, M15 slip roads and viaducts everywhere. Shame I wasn’t given a copy of the plan as I would have shared it here…. And yes I did become a civil engineer….. Great vid as always John!!
Presumably if there had been a river under it, it would have been a troubled bridge over water...
There is...the River Roding...get your signwriting kit ready....
I love the little piece of the M12 on the southbound M11 as it approaches the A406
If you blink, you miss it.
I'd seen it since I was a kid, but didn't know what it was doing there until I discovered Auto Shenanigans 😊
“Shall we just not bother?”…. 🧐 So inspiring..
I saw at 1:21 junction 4 was going to connect to the A406. Which I think was going to be ring road 3 on the map earlier in the video.
Riding or driving along the A406 is so bizarre at certain points. You can tell they demolished parts of neighborhoods to implement it and so it's practically on some peoples door steps. It must be a nightmare trying to park or leave your own driveway, let alone live there with all that noise and carbon. Fucking diabolical.
The carbon isn't really a problem on the local scale. It's all the other pollutants that hurt people nearby, particularly the nitrogen oxides, particulates (basically, engine soot) and dust.
Yep, that's exactly right. The North Circular was even widened to 3 lanes in anticipation of this happening and the only bits that weren't done were the junction at Arnos Grove and the blue signs everywhere. I think there were supposed to be more houses taken out around bits of it as well, but since the ringways were never implemented, they got left there. And yes, it looks like a nightmare
North Circular & South Circular were to be replaced by Ringway 2, and the A406 was actually built in the 1920s through what was partly open land at the time, but of course not to motorway standards as they didn't exist then. As it was just a normal road, it had no restrictions on property accesses (driveways etc) or the like, and with traffic being much less and slower it would have been far more acceptable at the time. You do realise that a lot has changed over 100 years, right?
I'm a local and use this slip road quite often, to/from the A12/A406. Thanks for the insight.
Well, there we go. Having driven that stretch for nearly 20 years I finally discover why it was built like that. Nice one Jon, button for liking this very much clicked.
So good that we never make tHoS2 mistakes any more.
The funny thing is HS2 actually has more of a purpose!
Overly costly yes, a mistake - no. Allocating ever more time, space and money on roads for private transport is less efficient & effective than on rail/road for mass transport, and there's few people today criticising the massive (and yes at times duplicate and wasteful) investments that were made into our railways a long time ago. The extra track capacity of HS2 is far from a waste, but the way it is being delivered, misinformation and political uncertainty generates needless waste.
longest 4mins in my life and there are so many more things like this. Thank you for taking the time to put this into words. Its better than watching a train crash..
"... at least in England they do !", well lad, not only in England, in Quebec TOO, we are currently witnessing the construction of the remaining highway 19 north of Montreal, a mere .... wait for it .... 45 years after the initial project had finished it's first part !
However, the result is a vast open space beneath the junction safe from the danger of traffic. What a bonus.!
Interesting situation and I have no doubt in your reasonings. Here in the US over the past decade or so major road construction has taken into account natural habitat movement (feeding, water and migratory) routes for wildlife. So in newer road construction it is not unusual to see occasional elevated sections apparently over open land.
These get better every week. Top effort sir!
'Lessons learnt will never be repeated' ... now there's a poignant statement given the ongoing situation with HS2 north of Birmingham! We never learn other than how to waste billions of pounds
i thought you had just finished a stage on "Outrun" at the end
I knew it had to be another racing game.
Unpopular opinion: all extra-urban roads should be built like this.
I agree. It preserves green spaces.
Only because pylons are cheaper than tunnels.
Really enjoy these midweek uplaods
Used to live nearby as a kid. There was an infamous Gatso speed camera on the southbound M11 just after the 50mph limit started -supposedly the biggest earner in the country.
still there, still making loads, it is like a disco light sometimes...
And a camera van used to park about 500 yards away to catch those who put their toe down once they passed it.
The work you put in shows!
Spam.
"Back to the studio", now where have I heard that before🤔
Never repeated if we don't mention HS2😅
Huh, Cambridge is in Cambridge. I need to write that down...
Well done Jon. I see you’ve made it into this morning’s Daily Express on-line with this.
This was in my recommendeds, & I`m glad it was! As a fairly local-ish A406 user who`s a car lover & a local history freak, I found it interesting! I`ll have to check out your other vids.. Subscribed!
Ha ha ha the black and white bit was quality 😂😂😂
There is a similar cock-up on the Essex side of the Dartford bridge, it does seem in wet seasons to have rivulets running beneath it, causes all sorts of grief to the horses and other animals living under it.
Another M11 related bridge over nothing. Where it crosses Chigwell Road, to the west of the M11 is a bridge over the River Roding. Immediately to the east is a bridge over nothing where the river used to flow before it was rerouted for the motorway build.
I never played a lot of racing games but my best mate did growing up and that outro music lit up my brain like a Christmas tree remembering hours of him in the menus fiddling with his cars.
Lovely dig at HS2 at the end.
Heh, nice pun 😂
Let's see what happens to the Euston terminus. It's going to need more than 6 HS2 platforms.
Another blinding video Jon, and a great end to my day.
Yet again on the M11, and I love hearing the stories about how our motorways were planned and built and the cockups / compromises that ensued - how the project cancellers laughed! 😂🥺
I tried to Shazam that tune you used at the end of the video, but have had no luck 🍀.
Thirty years ago,
there was a period during which that slip road from the northbound A406 was deliberately reduced from two lanes to one - massive back-ups and delays occurred before it was re-instated.
I've walked through that field which is apart of Roding Valley Park and it's a very strange place. The scale of the junction is ridiculous, just like the similarly half built Staples Corner. As for that last part of the video, I don't think we've learned a thing when it comes to infrastructure of any kind lol.
I often wondered why we had M1M2 etc but some numbers were missing?
Now I think I have part of the answer!
That takes me back. I used to live there. I was in the Queen Mary College university halls tower blocks overlooking that junction for two years.
Ringways was batshit crazy so i can see why it was binned off. However, had it gone ahead things today might be far better than the current m25 carpark we are left with.
We would have had more car parking.
Indeed. There'd be four circular linear car parks instead of one. o.o
@@TwoWholeWorms I don think so,. With 4 times the capacity it could only be better...assuming they didnt half arse it
3:28 yeah, I’m sure too 😮
I will give an alternative possible explanation, as i, originally came from that area nearby.
This road follows course of River Rodding, an there is part near a road, i think they called Broadmead Road, an quite of this river would flood, an of course with destination of that river being River Thames, that is tidal, could mean water being pushed up River Rodding, so perhaps this bridge was designed to over come flooding, as there-was also a feild next to Broadmead road, that flooded, but ofcourse they still allowed permission to build houses there. 16 to 11 pm gmt.
I do wish they'd at least built a free flowing slip between the southbound m11 and southbound a12. Redbridge roundabout is torture at the best of times.
true, but at least there are two lanes for turning right onto the a12. Some people don't realise this and queue in 1 lane then cut in on the roundabout.
Redbridge roundabout is great turning right onto the a12. Lovely bend with interesting camber, lots of run-off in case of mistakes, and a satisfying left turn as you exit onto the a12. It's great on both 2 wheels and 4
Another great and informative video Jon.
I remember that brazil (i think) made a bridge, and then they built a river underneath it to warrant the construction of the bridge to begin with.
Which is wild.
Nice work with the duration of this video, very fitting.
I just love the composition on your shots. You have a great eye.
Could I trouble you as to what camera and mic setup you use?
Correct me if I’m wrong please, but I always thought that the M11 was officially opened on 14th April 1977. One staring point was at South Woodford and the other was at Redbridge Roundabout, by the Tube Station. That is until around 1989 when that stretch became the A406
Speaking as a traffic engineer in the UK, a surprising amount of our work is decided by politics - everything from national government to individual councilors. We're all familiar with the pendulum-like effect of the tories doing one thing, getting booted out by labour who then do the opposite, getting booted out by the tories again who do the opposite, and so on. Well the same thing more or less happens with a lot of highways schemes.
Councilor A has 1, 2, and 3 as their priorities and steers development that way. The engineers draw up plans and designs, commission surveys and studies, undertake assessments and even evaluate initial designs and have them independently reviewed by road safety auditors - then, just as they start to develop what we call 'detailed design', the plans that will be given to the contractors to build it, Councilor A is booted out by Councilor B. Councilor B thinks 1, 2, and 3 are stupid priorities and insists his constituents want 4, 5, and 6 above all else. At best, the scheme is subtly altered to better fit the new 'vision', and at worst it' cancelled entirely to "Stop wasting all this money for pointless rubbish and build some proper infrastructure instead"
Now Whether A's ideology is better than Bs or not, who's to say, but I think the general public much prefers total, complete, 100% schemes than they do half-built, half-cancelled, and usually far less than half as useful or effective ones, even if the former conflicts with their own desires.
at least animals could use that "mystery bridge" to cross underneath the motorway from one side to another
TBH, it's probably good that there's all that "wasted" space with trees and things in it, rather than a more compact junction that's appropriate to its purpose, and the city jammed up against it.
Well done getting Mr. Hartley-Fozzington to do the voice over in black and white.
'Back to the studio" is one of the funniest things I've heard on your videos - I spat my tea out! hahahaha Also is the outro music from MarioKart? Great video as usual Jon, thanks.
Not quite. The bridge has always carried the M11. The M12 was supposed to dive under where you were stood. There are also a set of never-used stubs further towards the A406 where the M12 was supposed to join the junction. Fun fact, this bridge is the reason why the southbound M11 has a bottleneck that causes complete gridlock every morning. 3 lanes go down to 2 for the bridge and it’s not possible to widen it without completely demolishing and rebuilding. All because of cancelled project several decades ago.
awesome video, these videos should be required viewing for people who want to do road planning as a job
This is the best *video* I've ever seen about anything
2:44 was ace 😂
“Should we not bother?” 😂
There's another 'Bridge Over Nothing' located just east of Jct 27 of the M6 & north of Wigan.
It carries the A5209 (Almond Brook Road) over what is now (& always has been) a vast expanse of land wide enough for a dual carriageway to pass beneath.
Had this finally come to fruition it would have been part of the Wigan northern link road network, a network that would have seen two new link roads connecting parts of the Wigan area to Jct 27 of the M6 at Standish.
I understand that it would have been something of a "Y" network with the left part of the Y forming a bypass for Standish linking up with the A49 at the Boar's Head roundabout with the A5106.
The right part of the Y would have branched off to run somewhere behind Shevington High School, passing by Elnup Wood, Crooke, to eventually link up on Scot Lane at Martland Mill.
Three other pieces of infrastructure were actually built in the Martland Mill area as part of the advance works for the Wigan northern link road project & these are still in use to this day.
These are..
A bridge to carry a new alignment of Scot Lane over the Leeds & Liverpool canal
A bridge to carry a new alignment of Scot Lane over the River Douglas
A railway bridge that carries the Wigan to Southport railway line over a new alignment of Scot Lane
At least two of these bridges (the River Douglas bridge & the railway bridge) were built wider than the roads that they currently accommodate & that is because they were originally earmarked to part of a link road that never came to be.
wiganworld.co.uk/album/photo.php?opt=5&id=20273&gallery=Standish&offset=80
It's like a red dwarf episode imaging what life could have been like if all these roads were actually built.....
Thanks. That junction has always been a mystery.
Yayy, saw my old flat by the side of that junction near to the infamous Charlie Brown Roubdabout! I was a student at Queen Mary College in the late 70s, early 80s and lived in one of 3 tower blocks that overlooked the junction between the North Circular and M11, it was endless entertainment watching the clueles drivers end up on the wrong bit and try out dangerous manoevers to get back to the right bit...
I was stuck on 11 October on M11 at Stortford junction due to an accident. Why can’t a notice be posted on gantries at every junction warning of delays, before you join the motorway? I came off at Stortford as directed, turned onto A120 and got home three hours after I left, and a round trip of 60 miles. A waste of time and fuel. Why can’t we have crash barriers at intervals that can be removed so traffic can be turned around after opposite running traffic is stopped?
I am fed up with driving any distance in UK because of endless delays, potholes and roadworks everywhere.
Good video Jon
Love the recent uploads. Any plans in the near future to venture further up north with this series? Would be good to have a few videos for us northerners.
What is needed below is some, Troubled Waters. That bridge is said to have inspired Simon and Garfunkel when they saw the first plans.
Looking rather dapper there sir in your new attire hehe. . . Ooo thats such a lovely junction, the charlie brown roundabout, choas sometimes! Nice skyline shots there too.
101 uses for an empty bridge. 1. To fly under as a dare. 2. To demonstrate a 100% ship collision safety record...
That final song is far too calming for driving in London 😅
Vid about the A406 interchange is 4.06 mins long I see what you did there Jon - Sweet
A half finished infrastructure project in the uk. That almost never happens……
Oh wait 🙄
Brilliant reportage. Nice style.
You could say the exact same thing about spaghetti junction and the M6 viaduct at Junction six. There were other options, such as building an embankment and building the road on it, but no, they chose to build it on columns. Which needs all year round maintenance.
At that point, the M6 has to get over the River Tame, the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, the Tame Valley Canal, the Grand Union Canal, and the Birmingham to Sutton Coldfield Railway Line. It also has to interchange with the A38 and the A5127, so even if the M6 didn't go over both of those, one of the three roads would have to be on the top. So it's not remotely comparable to M11 J4.
As someone who's involved on athletics the southbound bridge user to give a good view of the Ashton Playing Fields running track just to the east. There's a lot more screening now.
Great video Jon
If the adjoining projects had been completed would the wonderful pirouetting ferries to Woolwich have been replaced by roads?
Hello; I'm John. (Don't forget next time)
Very interesting as usual.
I’m not a massive supporter of road building, but a direct connection from the M11 to the A12 towards Hackney Wick would be pretty useful and would save navigating the Redbridge roundabout bottleneck.
There is just about the space to build a bypass at Redbridge on the unlikely chance one was built.
3:18 Heard that one before 😂
"and im sure lessons have been learned so such things will never be repeated" he says on a video that went out in a week where HS2 being re-extended back to euston is on the cards again
if i was king all motorways would be raised by 15m
-burger40
Could build houses underneath them like in America then
@@tims9434 Would you want to live under a motorway.
You should take a look at the slip roads to nowhere in Beckton, East London. I believe they were meant for something called the London Gateway Crossing that never happened
The M11 is a farce oh a motorway, most of it is a duel carriageway especially in north Essex and Cambridgeshire. Almost as bad as the A12, a major trunk road that feeds the ports on the east coast but has roundabouts and single lanes! Rant over, keep up the great work fella!
The whole of the M11 is a dual carriageway. Parts are three lane carriageway, others two lane, but it is all dual carriageway.
Aaaah.. the 406 M11 interchange... my daily commute from Tottenham to Dagenham.. the sh1t iv seen go down on that road truly makes me weep.... for the decent of man.
I guess someone told them what Hackney Wick was rhyming slang for and the burgers of Cambridge said "No way is our motorway starting from there."
Fascinating, I still can’t understand how the two largest container ports in the UK are fed by the A12 and A14 two of the poorest roads in the country…..
This road goes along the River Roding flood plain and Incan remember it flooding so up in the air is OK
Bit of a side note but something I would love you to investigate, something that has intrigued me since I saw them build it over the space of a year that is a little bit further up the M11 just before the M25 exit slip road. Going north right next to the M11 as the road rises before a works depot there is a field and build into it is some kind of facility? It consists of large offset but concentric slightly raised circles build into it that are grass covered. I watched it being built like I say over about 18months and there were lots of techy vans there and to me it appeared to go under the M11 but I am not sure? All I can think of is that is some kind of antenna?? Its been bugging me?
Somebody should put a big tank of water under the bridge with the words "worry" , "fret" and "anxiety" written on it.
Then they could call it the "Bridge Over Troubled Water "
Thank you.
When you ask, “Why is this Motorway so weird?” the answer always seems to be “Ringways.”
Thanks
I remember hearing a rumour that the M11 was originally meant to go all the way to the Humber Bridge, but at some point someone decided to upgrade the A1 instead.
A still somewhat incomplete project.