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The A3 is the historic route south-west from London to Portsmouth, connecting the capital with the home of the navy. Upgrades have been happening to it since the early part of the 20th Century, but since the 1960s, it has been turned into a near-motorway (in fact, at one time there were plans afoot to renumber M3 as M30 to free up that number for a fully upgraded A3).
However, appearances are deceptive - the Esher Bypass, which is a full motorway formation, is the exception and much of the route has occasional right-turns. Plus, of course, Hindhead forms one of Britain's most notorious bottlenecks - it's the one place the road returns to single-carriageway and snakes through a village. Plans to tunnel under the Site of Special Scientific Interest here have progressed slowly, but construction work has now started.
The short blue line at the Portsmouth end of the A3 is another entirely isolated motorway, rather like the M2 and M90. This one just bypasses a nasty bit of the A3 through Waterlooville and Horndean, though it does it in considerable style in comparison to the rest of the route, which is almost motorway standard but certainly not a motorway.
The M27 stops just four miles short of reaching the A3(M), throughout which it is four lanes wide, grade separated and has very nearly full width hard shoulders. Despite some pieces of road (like the A57(M) or Chiswick flyover section of M4) being a long way below this standard, the fact that its hard shoulders are a few inches too narrow is apparently the official reason for its reluctance to turn blue.
The A3(M)'s number gives you a headache if you think about it too long. It implies that this is a section of the A3 with motorway restrictions. However, running parallel through Waterlooville is the A3. So that means... two A3's? Erm...
Factfile
| Start | Porstmouth (A27) |
| Finish | Horndean (A3) |
| Passes | Waterlooville |
| Length | 5 miles |
| Terminates | None |
| Spurs | None |
| Meets | None |
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With thanks to Andy, Mark Baker, Ritchie Swann and Robert Bollen for information in this section.
