Why is the M25 closed this weekend and how bad will traffic be?

“Quit home weekend”: that is the appropriate slogan between 15 and 18 March for motorists who on the total utilize the southwest quadrant of the M25 motorway.

From 9pm on Friday 15 March to 6am on Monday 18 March 2024, Nationwide Highways is to shut the M25 in both directions between junctions 10 and 11. These are key intersections on the southwest quadrant of the motorway. Junction 10 is where the M25 meets the A3 to Guildford and Portsmouth, with many motorists additionally gaining access to Chessington World of Scamper. Junction 11 serves the key link of the A320 between Staines and Woking, as effectively as the A317 to Weybridge.

Nationwide Highways says the closure is “to demolish the Clearmount bridleway bridge and install a extremely gigantic gantry”. It says: “With no tubby closure of the M25 at this junction, it would be now not capability to securely demolish the overbridges and install the new gantry.”

On the total as a lot as 6,000 vehicles per hour – or 100 vehicles, coaches and vehicles per minute – utilize the 5-mile stretch of the M25 at weekends.

The organisation has prescribed a diversionary route that better than doubles the 5-mile distance between the two junctions. Nationwide Highways is warning “finest hotfoot back and forth is important”.

Travellers gaining access to Heathrow and Gatwick airports will be affected, as will many motorists heading for Channel crossings in Kent.

How bad will or now not it is? These are the key questions and answers.

News Why is the M25 closed?

Nationwide Highways says it is part of a “most important mission to build journeys safer and decrease air pollution”.

The organisation says: “The Junction 10 declare design will peek an expand in the option of lanes to build journeys safer and pork up traffic hotfoot with the circulation. It will additionally build it easier and safer to enter and exit the M25.

“It will additionally decrease the air pollution precipitated by traffic jams.”

News Has this occured sooner than?

Not in the course of the day; there had been occasional evening closures when traffic is very gentle.

The final link in the M25 motorway round London – between London Colney and South Mimms – became as soon as opened to traffic by then-top minister Margaret Thatcher at 9.30am on 29 October 1986.

Since then accidents, congestion and roadworks have precipitated countless complications. Yet by no technique has a a must-have stretch of 1 in every of Europe’s busiest motorways been fully closed for a weekend.

This will be the first of 5 closures between now and September 2024.

News What’s the advice for drivers?

Jonathan Wade, Nationwide Highways Venture Lead, says: “Drivers must gentle finest utilize the M25 if their crawl is fully important.

“We now have spent months planning for these closures and making particular there are diversion routes in topic, however there will gentle be heavy congestion and delays.”

The diversion route involves the A3, the A245 and the A320.

“Taking the M25 in the other route to take care of some distance from our closure is additionally an possibility,” Nationwide Highways says.

The organisation’s senior mission supervisor, Daniel Kittredge, urges motorists now to not note ideas of their satnav, and as a change follow the reputable diversion. The dismay is that gridlock may perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps rapid spread across northwest Surrey.

“If of us cross some distance from diversion routes that we prescribe, it creates further issues in diverse capabilities of the street network,” he says. “The majority of the time that will be local roads, so that if truth be told impacts residents in these explicit areas.”

Alice Simpson of RAC Breakdown says: “The most evident diversion routes are inclined to salvage extremely congested.

“It’s constantly finest to place of abode off as early as possible and take care of some distance from travelling in the course of peak hours cherish gradual morning and lunchtime.

“As the M25 is notoriously one amongst the busiest routes in the nation any expand in drivers may perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps consequence in extra breakdowns, and great extra jams.”

She says motorists heading for Heathrow or Gatwick airport “will wish to proceed great overtime to salvage there”.

Earlier than the M25 opened, journeys between the UK’s two busiest airports had been extremely slack and advanced by street. Coach links between Gatwick and Heathrow are additionally more likely to be disrupted.

News Will any coaches be working?

Trail. A spokesperson for Nationwide Whine acknowledged: “Nationwide Whine will continue to characteristic services and products alongside diverted routes in the course of subsequent weekend’s closure of the M25 between junctions 10 and 11.

“Delays are anticipated and prospects are advised to allow masses of time for their crawl.

“We’re contacting prospects who’re tormented by the weekend’s diversion to give a free modification to their label must gentle they wish to alter their hotfoot back and forth plans.”

A spokesperson for FlixBus acknowledged: “On the subject of all our network will be unaffected by M25 closures, delivering legit, sensible transport as extraordinary, with finest a handful of services and products between Bristol and South Wales terminating at Heathrow between 15 and 18 March rather than going thru to Gatwick airport.

“Passengers who had been booked onto these Gatwick services and products had been given the possibility to either change their date of hotfoot back and forth or receive a tubby refund.”

News Any replacement route between Heathrow and Gatwick airports?

Trail. The straightforward possibility is to take cling of the Elizabeth Line from Heathrow to Farringdon in central London, which has an instantaneous connection to Thameslink trains. The crawl time is about 90 minutes.

Maddeningly, Nationwide Rail doesn’t provide fares for the total crawl. The solution is to aquire one label from Heathrow to East Croydon and another from there to Gatwick. The total single fare is £22.30.

News With there be other complications that weekend?

Trail. Traffic on the remainder of the M25 is more likely to be great heavier; as an illustration motorists from Birmingham or Oxford taking the M40 to London may perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps pick to cross for Gatwick thru the northern and jap sections of the M25, increasing congestion.

Many key rail links across Stout Britain are closed – with the absence of trains from London Marylebone to Aylesbury perhaps exacerbating complications precipitated by the M25 closure.

Further rail closures: