M25 motorway

Rare card · No. 65791

The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a major ring road encircling most of Greater London. The 117-mile-long (188 km) motorway is one of the most important roads in the UK and one of the busiest. Margaret Thatcher opened the final section in 1986, making the M25 the longest ring road in Europe upon its opening. The Dartford Crossing completes the orbital route but is not classed as motorway; it is classed as a trunk road and designated as the A282. In some cases, including notable legal contexts such as the Communications Act 2003, the M25 is used as a de facto alternative boundary for Greater London. In the 1944 Greater London Plan, Patrick Abercrombie proposed an orbital motorway around London. This evolved into the London Ringways project in the early 1960s, and by 1966 planning had begun on two projects, Ringway 3 to the north and Ringway 4 to the south. By the time the first sections opened in 1975, it was decided the ringways would be combined into a single orbital motorway. The M25...

Read on Wikipedia · Image UK motorways map (thick lines).svg: User:Dr Greg and User:Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey and OpenStreetMap data derivative work: Dr Greg, CC BY-SA 4.0