M45 motorway

M45 motorway
Route information
Length:	7.9 mi (12.7 km)
Existed:	1959 – present
Major junctions
From:	Watford Gap
	; M1 motorway
To:	Thurlaston
Location
Primary; destinations:	Rugby, Coventry
Road network
	Roads in the United Kingdom; Motorways; A and B road zones;

A bridge carrying disused Great Central Railway is in the distance.

One of the original Owen Williams bridges

The M45 is a motorway in Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, England and is 7.9 miles (12.7 km) long. It runs from junction 17 of the M1 motorway south east of Rugby and ends with a junction with the A45 road southwest of Rugby. It has one of the lowest traffic volumes of the United Kingdom motorway system.

History

Built in 1959 when the M1 (as part of a link from London to Birmingham) went as far as Junction 18, the M45 was designed to dissipate some of the motorway traffic before the M1 terminated.¹ Its equivalent at the southern end of the M1 is the former M10, which was downgraded on 1 May 2009 to become part of the A414.

As the signposted route to Birmingham in the 1960s it was one of the busiest roads in Britain, with motorists having to make the final 30 miles (48 km) or so of the journey along the predominantly dual carriageway A45.²

In 1972, the opening of the M6 provided a much faster route through to the West Midlands from London. Most traffic diverted to this route, leaving the M45 with only a fraction of its previous traffic.

A limited-access junction (Eastbound exit and Westbound entry) was added in September 1991³ around two-thirds of the way along from the M1, near Dunchurch. Apart from this, the motorway is very much in its 'as-built' condition.

Junctions

Data from driver location signs are used to provide distance and carriageway identifier information.⁴

miles	km	Northbound exits (A carriageway)	Junction	Southbound exits (B carriageway)
M45 motorway junctions
7.7	12.4	Coventry, Rugby, A45 Dunchurch B4429	J1	Start of motorway
6.0	9.7	No access		Daventry A45
0.1	0.2	Start of motorway	M1, J17	The south, Northampton M1
Notes Distances in kilometres and carriageway identifiers are obtained from driver location signs/location marker posts. Where a junction spans several hundred metres and the data is available, both the start and finish values for the junction are shown.
Motorway Primary road Secondary road Concurrency terminus Closed/former HOV only Incomplete access Tolled/ETC Unopened

Notes

^ "The Motorway Archive Scheme Page". Iht.org. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
^ "M45 at the motorway database". Cbrd.co.uk. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
^ Steven Jukes. "Pathetic Motorways – M45". Pathetic.org.uk. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
^ Traffic England Live Traffic Condition Map Highways Agency – Locations extracted from Traffic Camera Popup identifier text.