M25 closure – live: Traffic building as five-mile stretch closed to drivers due to bridge works

Queues stay mild on both facet of the M25 closure, site visitors cameras present.

A digital camera within the run-up to Junction 10 reveals automobiles lined up tightly on the method to the diversion, as they’ve been all morning.

Whereas the 2 cameras within the method to Junction 11 are out of motion, there seems to be lower than 2km of congestion within the lead-up to the diversion there.

The Impartial’s journey correspondent Simon Calder has prompt opening up a part of the closed-off stretches of the M25 to cyclists and pedestrains through the 4 upcoming shutdowns.

He writes: “I don’t counsel that guests ought to play among the many bulldozers as the employees energetically pursue the Monday morning reopening deadline.

“However since a number of miles of motorway are totally unoccupied, I commend correctly organised walks and bike rides alongside the empty carriageways.

“Abu Dhabi opens its Method One circuit repeatedly to pedestrians, runners and cyclists, and the M25 may present the identical short-term playground. To cite H G Wells as soon as once more, “a stupendous serenity” deserves to be appreciated.

Byfleet and West Byfleet turned estranged within the early Nineteen Eighties. What got here between them was an 80-yard-wide slicing carrying six lanes of site visitors – later “densified” to eight lanes. Over a traditional weekend, each minute a median of 100 automobiles, lorries and buses barrel by means of this deep divide.

Ten miles to the north: Europe’s busiest airport, Heathrow; 20 miles southeast, the UK’s foremost vacation airport, Gatwick. And wherever you wish to go in Britain, should you can’t entry it from a motorway or A-road junction on the M25, it’s in all probability not value going.

Since Margaret Thatcher opened the total circuit in 1986, the M25 has grow to be one of the vital essential items of infrastructure in Europe. For the primary time, a daytime closure is happening. A stretch of the motorway southwest of London is shut for the weekend, till 6am on Monday.

The intention: to enhance Junction 10, the place the M25 meets the A3 trunk street linking London with Guildford and Portsmouth (to not point out Chessington World of Adventures). The one approach to do that is to shut the whole five-mile stretch to Junction 11:

Site visitors cameras seem to point out little site visitors on the approaches to Junctions 10 and 11, the place the diversion is in drive.

The Night Normal had reported an hour in the past that Inrix information prompt round 2km of site visitors had been constructing to the north of the street closure at Junction 11, close to Chertsey.

Our journey correspondent Simon Calder studies:

“By Byfleet station we emerged from the pine timber, and located the nation calm and peaceable below the morning daylight.”

I recalled that line – from H G Wells’s Warfare of the Worlds – at West Byfleet station in Surrey as I emerged from the primary prepare of the morning from London on Saturday.

On this leafy nook of the house counties, all was “calm and peaceable below the morning daylight” – till the primary Bulgarian truck got here thundering by means of. The lorry had been diverted from its deliberate trajectory by the unprecedented closure of a stretch of the M25 orbital motorway round London. And the A245 between Byfleet and West Byfleet has grow to be a part of a diversionary route – as nicely, I used to be to find, as a short lived vacationer attraction:

Amanda Boote, of Woking Borough Council, has advised the PA information company that site visitors alongside the diversion route by means of the cities of Byfleet, West Byfleet, Woking and Ottershaw was not as unhealthy as feared.

Congestion stretched for 2 miles on Saturday morning, based on Nationwide Highways South-East, and the estimated common journey time by means of the 11.5-mile diversion route was 25 minutes.

NHSE mentioned on Saturday it had made good progress through the first night time of labor.

Drivers have been warned to count on delays to their journeys all through the day.

Good progress has been made on the M25 in Surrey, the place engineers are bringing down a bridge through the motorway’s first ever deliberate daytime closure.

A five-mile stretch between junctions 10 and 11 has been shut in each instructions since 9pm on Friday and received’t reopen till 6am on Monday.

“We made good progress through the first night time of the M25 J10 to J11 weekend closure,” NHSE posted on X at 9.05pm on Saturday.

“We’ll once more work all through the night time to proceed the demolition and gantry installations. There are minimal delays within the space at the moment.”