A2, M2 or A2(M)
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The final radial route in the series. At the time this was planned in the 1960s, the A2 was still the de-facto route between London and Dover. It is only in relatively recent years that the completion of the M20, and lack of corresponding upgrades to the A2 in east Kent, made the A20/M20 corridor the main road to both Dover and Folkestone.
In any case, it hardly matters whether traffic would be going all the way to Dover: the A2 has enough on its plate dealing with the volume of traffic between London and the Medway Towns.
Like the A20 and A40, the planned number for this radial route is still unclear, and likely to remain so. In this particular case, a number can be pinned down for certain sections, but not for the whole route. Today, of course, it is simply the A2 all the way to Chatham, where the M2 picks up the baton, though there is some vague and sketchy evidence to suggest M2 was an option right in to London.
The most compelling evidence is that a road named "A2(M) Dover Radial Route" is found in the preparation pool for road schemes in the 1970s and is listed as a GLC scheme.
Ringway 1 & A20, M20 or A20(M) (Kidbrooke Interchange)
A205 Westhorne Avenue
R2 Eastern Section (Falconwood Interchange)
Local connections to Bexley & Dartford
R3 Eastern Section
Continues to Medway Towns & Dover
The route
While the A2 itself begins at London Bridge, the high-capacity radial route planned in the 1960s begins smartly on the south-eastern corner of Ringway 1. A free-flowing junction, Kidbrooke Interchange, would have provided the connections here, with the A2 flowing directly into the Ringway 1 South Cross Route. The road would strike south-east along the present day line of the A2 Rochester Way Relief Road, interchanging with the A205 Westhorne Avenue and then continuing non-stop through Eltham to an interchange with Ringway 2 just south of Oxleas Wood.
East of this point, there is no clear evidence for the line of the road, but it seems reasonable to assume that it would follow the line of the existing A2 out of London, with local connections as appropriate on the way. At Dartford, a three-level stacked roundabout junction was built to connect the A2 with the A282 Dartford Tunnel approach (shown right; click to enlarge), with the knowledge that the latter would become the Eastern Section of Ringway 3.
History
The A2, or A2(M), or whatever it may have been called, was subsequently completed as a dualled and grade-separated route after the Ringway plans had been cancelled, and was designated A2. The resulting bypass, the Rochester Way Relief Road, was built through Eltham on the line of the Ringway proposal (shown left; click to enlarge). It connects two high-grade roads that had already been built: to the west, the East Cross Route (intended to be part of Ringway 1), and to the east, the rest of the A2 heading out of London. The project was probably the biggest road construction scheme within Greater London in the 1980s.
The irony is that, of the dense box of motorways planned for the Eltham and Mottingham area, the one that was eventually built was the only one that the local authority had originally objected to. In the Greater London Development Plan inquiry, Woolwich Borough Council submitted proposals to omit the motorway through Eltham, diverting its traffic along sections of Ringway 2 and A20(M) via Mottingham. By 1989, the A2 Rochester Way Relief Road meant that the section they had found most objectionable was the only part of this junction complex to be built.
The scheme is not, however, the A2(M) in full. It's much narrower, for one thing: two lanes in each direction, as opposed to the Ringway standard of three or four plus hard shoulder. At its western end, Kidbrooke Interchange exists, but it is not the four-level free-flow junction that was originally proposed. The grade-separated, high speed A2 instead connects to the grade-separated, high speed East Cross Route with a set of traffic lights.
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