M5 - M50
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Ordnance Survey map - Alternative aerial view
Where is it?
M5 junction 8. The main road south from Birmingham forks, into the M5 (Gloucester, Bristol and the West Country) and the M50 (South Wales).
What's wrong with it?
It's one of these silly ones where a motorway starts at a junction that's anything but free-flowing. The M5 glides across the top on a flyover, while the M50 comes to a grinding halt at the roundabout. Because it's all motorway, the roundabout has hard shoulders and signs saying "Roundabout subject to motorway regulations". It's also a rather disconcerting place to end up when you leave Strensham services heading southbound, since they dump you onto the roundabout too.
Why is it wrong?
There's a good reason why this roundabout interchange makes it into 'Bad Junctions' and all its friends (M18/M180 and so on) don't. The reason is that once upon a time, this junction was free flowing. There was a trumpet interchange here - you can see the empty land where a loop once existed just south-east of the current roundabout. There doesn't seem to be any reason for this; when the M5 north of here was widened from two to three lanes each way, the junction was replaced and made the odd transition away from free-flow. The only imaginable reason is that it eliminates the weaving between the services and the junction by allowingservices traffic to join at the junction itself and still access both motorways.
What would be better?
Reinstating the trumpet would be nice, since it's free flow, but this brings back the weaving traffic problem after the services. Since there's not a lot of traffic turning onto the M50 anyway, it's probably not worth changing.
Right to Reply
E-mail me with your comments.
'PT' was responsible for the trunk roads in this area at the time the junction was remodelled. He says:
The original 'trumpet', as you say, was a much better free-flow layout that the roundabout. True, some lorries did fall over on the bends in older days, but this was reduced to almost zero after I designed a rather snazzy white hatching system to reduce the slips to a single lane, highlighting the severity of the curves.
We made representations about our concerns to the designers (in far away Surrey) but they were adamant that the roundabout was the best answer - they said that, taking into all factors, such as land-take; required access to/from the service area and to/from the maintenance depot; as well as emergency traffic flow arrangements.
There was once a plan to put the new (single) service area at the roundabout - but I don't think that was a factor (?).
The thing plainly doesn't flow well though... I think it could be improved vastly with some judicious use of 'dedicated lanes' and some of that aforementioned snazzy white hatching.
Andy writes:
I think you are slightly harsh. The original junction was terrifying. Both leaving the M5 south because of the tight bend (no matter how slow you went it seemed) and joining the M5 north because of the services. The current junction may not be ideal but is a huge improvement.
Owain adds:
I remember this one as a 'trumpet' from the '80s, and when I started using it again more recently, I thought my memory had been wrong when I discovered it is not! Now I see my memory was right.
Why did they change it? It is quite ridiculous for two motorways (and no other roads) to meet in such a manner, and there is no need for a complete roundabout. If they had to insist on the roundabout formation, they could have followed the M4-M32 example, where traffic from the terminating motorway does not have to give way to the right, because the 'roundabout' is closed off at that point.
The M4/M32 roundabout was modified in this way in the early 90s and so the M50 roundabout precedes it - still a good idea though. -Ed
Dave J has a thought:
There is a extraordinary vehicles refuge in the centre/East part of the island. This may be the (only) reason why a full roundabout is required at this junction to allow loads to stop when travelling in either direction.
Matthew Harrison thinks things are just fine:
I use this road quite a lot when driving down to see my sister who lives in Swansea. I have never had any problems here because as you say, barely any people ever use the M50. It is however very beautiful.
MET has a plan:
The worst thing about this junction is the approach from the north for traffic turning west on to M50. There are two exits in very quick succession both appearing on the same ADS. The first exit is for the service area and the second for the turning traffic, only problem is that the second exit taper is so short it is easy to miss if there is slow moving traffic in the left lane. Far better to take all the traffic off at the first slip and abandon the unecessary complication of two exits.
Presumably this would involve connecting the two sliproads together, and not just making all M50 traffic go through the service area... -Ed.
With thanks to Richard Lampitt for information on this page.
