Was thinking if the new M12 motorway would of gone to Chelmsford, Colchester and Ipswich where the A12 current goes. But never knew that the M12 motorway would of gone all the way to where the new Maplins Sands airport would of been built. Except now you got the A127 Southend Arterial Road and the A13 which both roads goes to Southend-on-Sea.

@HollowayTyre

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, as I understand it, this was a driving purpose of the M12 - to give a good quality link to a new 'London' airport. No airport = no motorway.

@AndrewG1989

2 жыл бұрын

@@HollowayTyre Would be funny to see the M12 motorway extended all the way to Colchester, Ipswich and ending at Great Yarmouth. And the M11 could of extend from London to Norwich avoiding Cambridge and passing by Newmarket and Thetford.

@neilevans8940

Жыл бұрын

@@AndrewG1989 I believe the intended destination of the M11 was the Humber Bridge...

@AndrewG1989

10 ай бұрын

But the M11 would never extend to Humber Bridge. That was just a suggestion. But the M11 could of extend all the way to Norwich and would of taken the route on what the A11 currently goes.

@Jimbo-gi7xn

6 ай бұрын

The M12 was going to go via Chelmsford and Colchester..it was the M13 that was going to go to Southend. M11 12 and 13 were all going to run from the A406

Living in Rayleigh, that M12 plan looks ideal. We really need a road that goes off the A127/A1245/A130 junction up and round Rayleigh off to Shoebury to bypass Southend

Fun fact. The roads skirting Southend were built with dual lamp standards despite only being single carriageway. A bits of the road were upgraded to dual carriageway later but the bulk remains single carriageway to this day. One problem with Mapin sands was that the mud holds lots of unexpoded ordnance from a century of testing. They cleared a test section, only to find that the mud had started filling up with new undiscovered munitions, because of its fluid nature.

@HollowayTyre

9 ай бұрын

That is fascinating about the munitions. Sounds like the airport would have had bombs within it despite security screening.

Thanks; never knew of this 'what could have been' motorway.

If there ever is an M12 now I would expect it to be an upgrade of the A120 (which unlike the A12 is a delight to travel on) extended to Colchester. The A12 is a ghastly road; some of the surfacing was already there in the 1980s when I used to travel up and down it on the way to and from boarding school. It's rough and noisy. And the road is horribly windy. It wasn't built as a whole but upgraded piecemeal from an old main road, parts of which are still in use as the A12 (e.g. between Witham and Kelvedon and between Kelvedon and the A120). I recall once seeing plans to build a motorway to replace it which would have run to the north of Chelmsford. If this would mean ripping up most of the present bypasses then that's OK by me.

@HollowayTyre

Жыл бұрын

The roads into Essex seem to leave a lot of be desired - many people commenting here on them. So _amazing_ that nothing has really happened in this corner of the country in terms of improving roads. Perhaps they want people to go A120 to M11 to get in and out of London.

Another great video, I’ve always been confused exactly how the M12 would have intersected with the M11. I’ve walked past those stilts loads of times but still can’t picture that the M12 would have threaded between them. Crazy stuff.

@HollowayTyre

Жыл бұрын

I had quite a think about it and did figure there was enough space for 2 lanes in either direction. But absolutely I thought initially that there was never enough space.

Fun fact: it's called the "A one two seven" not "A one twenty seven" by anyone actually from Essex 👍

@HollowayTyre

8 ай бұрын

Fair play, and noted!

Germany has an A12 autobahn, from Berlin to the Poland border at Frankfurt an der Oder. It goes on to Warsaw ( numbered A2 in Poland).

@HollowayTyre

5 ай бұрын

Ah, well I must have cycled close to it then, or at least a little way north of the A12! I passed through Frankfurt an der Oder in 1999 as we continued into Poland on a cycle ride across Europe. We ended up in Istanbul. kzread.info/dash/bejne/pIumz9atf5rTdco.html

There was also an M13 Motorway intended to go to the Airport along most of the A13 line and to the South of Southend, in the Estuary.

@HollowayTyre

2 жыл бұрын

Just read about it on Pathetic Motorways. Looks like Essex and Southend dodge an unpleasant bullet there!

i find the m13 interesting - london to maplin sands bypasses southend to the south!

Maplin airport was also going to be right next to M.O.D. Land on foulness island. This was known as AWRE (atomic weapons research establishment) which could be another reason it wasn’t built.

I was in Chelmsford in 1978 greetings from Scotland 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

There building an M12 here in Sydney to the new Western Sydney Airport.

@HollowayTyre

2 жыл бұрын

I read about that - is it not built yet. Somehow I got the idea that it happened a while ago.

@newforestpixie5297

Жыл бұрын

Near us is the ridiculous Christchurch Bypass - built in 1960 to dump traffic literally at one end of Christchurch High Street and a terrible bottleneck . Anyway I thought I’d look for 1960s news reports heralding the opening of this half-a - job of a road to see how it could possibly have been hyped as a solution to keeping the 50,000 folk from the eastern part of the town & the towns & villages of the southern New Forest from being snarled in long traffic queues whilst trying to reach Bournemouth/Poole . There were loads of videos relating to Christchurch Bypass for sure - these were heralding the brand new multi-layered junctions , underpasses and sweeping 3 lane freeway which now circles the city of Christchurch in NZ. Our British version just had links to the same 4 proposals which will avoid the place that have been dusted off every 5 years then rejected for every possible reason since 1975…..☹️👍

That would have been a bit confusing with the A12 and M12 going to different places! Sounds like it should have been the M127! Those stilts the M11 is built on - they barely look wide enough for a M-way carriageway to pass between them, and don't look particularly high either.

@HollowayTyre

Жыл бұрын

I, too, thought they looked too narrow for a motorway so I spent a little time looking when I was there. I concluded that it would work - perhaps just two lanes but I think other motorway merges are done in similar amounts of space. Not sure about height though.

The incarnation of the M12 covered here was a later plan and the original plan was to go to the gar side of Chelmsford. Now the A12 Chelmsford bypass follows the planned M12 route.

@HollowayTyre

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks, I'd not come across this route plan. Was the destination still to be Maplin Sands airport?

@shauntodd7123

2 жыл бұрын

@@HollowayTyre I understand it was one of 3. First to meet the A12 at Brentwood, second to Maplin Sands and finally to meet the A12 east of Chelmsford were the Chelmsford bypass ebds at Boreham.

Where is M12 motorway & M13 motorway in Essex

Missing motorway

There is an M12 in the UK, actually - it’s a pathetic effort branching off J11 of Northern Ireland’s M1.

@HollowayTyre

Жыл бұрын

I did come across this so, of course, you are right. I meant to reference it in the video.

They even had plans to build a space station in grays in the 1950s but the funny thing is it's 2024 we haven't even colonised a single planet yet it was going to have special motorway connected to it lot's of things was in place but never happened

Stupid M12, coming over here not existing and that.

@HollowayTyre

2 жыл бұрын

Yep. On the one hand, it'd be a handy motorway. On the other hand, do we want to encourage more roads? Flying taxis, thats the answer...!

In the States, the Interstate system was numbered to be exactly reverse of the older U.S. highway system. Thus U.S. 1 is paralleled by I-95 along the East Coast, and I-5 follows U.S. 101 along the West Coast. In fact, much of I-5 was originally built as U.S. 99, which no longer exists. Unfortunately, the middle of the U.S., both the Interstates and the U.S. highways are numbered in the 50s and 60s; one must be careful there.

@HollowayTyre

Жыл бұрын

That is a pretty interesting idea. Did the same happen on the north south highways? From a very quick look, it seems that the east west routes are odd numbers and the north south are even numbers.

@pacificostudios

Жыл бұрын

@@HollowayTyre No, the other way around. East-West is even, North-South is odd. Thus world-famous U.S. 66 was built from Illinois to California, while U.S. 65 goes from Minnesota to Louisiana. Meanwhile Interstate 65 runs from Indiana to Alabama. There probably are places where an Interstate crosses another route with the same number, especially a state highway route, but it is rare. The major U.S. routes still run across the entire country, U.S. 2 goes from Washington State to Maine, old U.S. 90 ran from Los Angeles to Florida. Old U.S. 98 connected San Diego with U.S. 90 in Arizona. England, by comparison, went with a polar system revolving around London. A polar system would have never worked in the States since no one city dominates travel like London.

@HollowayTyre

Жыл бұрын

Stupid me, yes I should have seen that. So any route that crosses another with the same or near number would be in the middle? Is that right? Yes, England is very London centric - all roads lead to -Rome- London, much to the disgust of plenty of people in the UK.

@pacificostudios

Жыл бұрын

@@HollowayTyreWell, only if one is North-South and the other is East-West. However, especially with the US highways, many of the roads are diagonal, like US 66, which started in Illinois and kept going southwest all the way to California. The US highway system, which began in 1926, is like the "A" road system of Britain, originally laid out as a web of undivided two lane roads.

@HollowayTyre

Жыл бұрын

Why diagonal? Is it purely about creating a road to go from place A to place B?

There is no M10 in the uk

I’m sure you know this but there’s no M7 either!

@HollowayTyre

2 жыл бұрын

Interesting… but was there ever a plan to build one?

@paulbrown9802

2 жыл бұрын

@@HollowayTyre I don’t believe so, the single digit M motorways follow roughly the same or a similar route of their associated single digit A roads, but the route of the A7 (Carlisle to Edinburgh through a small area of Cumbria, a small area of Dumfries and Galloway, a large part of the Scottish Borders then through Midlothian to Edinburgh) doesn’t lend itself to the allowance of land required for a motorway, it wouldn’t ever happen so I guess it’s never really been an option. It’s one of those anomalies and has been a quiz question I’ve seen on TV in the past (which of these is NOT a UK motorway) 😀

@AndrewG1989

2 жыл бұрын

Even there isn't no M13, M14, M15, M16, M17 and M19 in England. 😂😂

@digitallifeline162

Жыл бұрын

There isn't an M10 any more. It's now the A414. Scottish motorways are numbered according to the A road they run alongside.

@neilevans8940

Жыл бұрын

@@paulbrown9802 The M5 blows your theory...

Mmmmmmmm12

@HollowayTyre

2 жыл бұрын

My feeling entirely.