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

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

Ten miles to the north: Europe’s busiest airport, Heathrow; 20 miles southeast, the UK’s major vacation airport, Gatwick. And wherever you need to go in Britain, in case 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 complete circuit in 1986, the M25 has grow to be one of the vital important 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 highway linking London with Guildford and Portsmouth (to not point out Chessington World of Adventures). The one means to do that is to shut the whole five-mile stretch to Junction 11:

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

The Night Customary had reported an hour in the past that Inrix information advised round 2km of visitors had been constructing to the north of the highway 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 practice 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 way 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 brief vacationer attraction:

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

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

NHSE stated 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 gained’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 are going to 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.”

Individuals have flocked to an unlikely spot to take selfies as they gaze over an eerily quiet M25.

A five-mile stretch of the highway has been shut till Monday whereas a bridge is demolished and a brand new gantry is put in.

The primary deliberate daytime closure of the M25 might be a “nightmare”, a councillor fears as native residents and companies alongside the diversion route brace for the affect.

Daryl Jordan, of Woking Borough Council, instructed the PA information company the Byfleet Highway, which is near junction 10, had been “chock-a-block” on Friday afternoon.

He stated residents will likely be “affected massivel”, including: “It’s pulling folks aside. I imply, you understand, once you work full-time and then you definately’re going to get residence tonight from work considering ‘I have to fill the fridge up’ and you may’t even get into your individual village.

“It’s going to be a nightmare. Simply taking place the highway to get milk goes to be an issue … or choosing up your dry cleansing.”