How the devil are you? Have you had a good week?

January 21, 2024 9:21 AM

In July 2022, YouTube channel Auto Shenanigans started a new series called Secrets of the Motorway. With the posting of part 3 of the M25, the series is now complete, and we have 80 short videos about every motorway in mainland Britain.

The videos are as much about the places the roads pass near - train tunnels, abandoned airfields, ill-considered public art - as the motorways themselves and the occasional badly-designed junction.

I'd rather we put as much effort into non-car transport, but these are still enjoyable and it's worth celebrating the achievement.

(Link goes to a YouTube playlist, obviously).

posted by YoungStencil (17 comments total)

Not just every motorway in mainland Britain, but also the motorway to Britain's most populous outlying island.

I've enjoyed quite a bit of them, although I'm definitely an avoid-cars person, and there's the occasional “government gets everything wrong” bit. But yes, the genial approach and the clever wording and the encyclopædic level of information definitely makes them worth a watch.
posted by ambrosen at 9:38 AM on January 21

Okay, so it's not 80 about every motorway, it's 80 videos total.

This is fascinating, as I've never been there, and certainly have never considered highway construction there. Thanks for posting!
posted by hippybear at 10:47 AM on January 21

I've watched a number of these over the last 18 months. They are kind of compelling. My teenage years were spent in deepest rural Essex 50 crow-fly km NE of Charing Cross. I used to say "I live beyond the end of the Central Line" to establish my Byway Cred. TIL that Ongar is still Mile Zero for the whole London Tube System, despite being closed 30 years ago. Rural? Mrs Smith our neighbour-but-three, who was born in the 1890s, had never been to London.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:03 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]

I like the long term view he takes. Taken over the full timescale of its existence the British motorway network often seems to be an example of amazing engineering that somehow joins together all the examples of planning short shortsightedness, insularity between areas and cycles of crazy generosity and mad cost-cutting. With the occasional piece of public art thrown in.
posted by rongorongo at 2:02 PM on January 21

I like these: sarcasm, drone footage and nerdery.

The M25 videos refer to the London Ringways Project, about which there's a video in the "Unfinished London" series by Jay Foreman.
posted by k3ninho at 2:30 PM on January 21

I do wish the playlist were in forward chronological order rather than reverse, but I understand why it is that way due to YouTube technicalities.

As it is, I'm watching him go backward through time, so that's in and of itself an interesting exercise.
posted by hippybear at 7:46 PM on January 21

And I'm going to say, I'm completely confounded by his production and release schedule. He did one of these a week, every week, for 80 week? Without a break? Surely he had planning and stuff so he wasn't going out every week, filming, editing and posting, week after week as a grind....

Also, is there a rhyme or reason to the road number system in the UK? There is one in the US that is actually easy to understand and explain, but I'm unable to tell through these videos if there is for the UK.

I'm also realizing, the UK is tiny, and so the equivalent of this would be doing all the US highways and State highways and I guess Interstate highways within a state in the US.

I"m sitting and imaging doing this for the highways in New Mexico where I grew up and fell in love with driving, and I think it could be done. I'm not sure the series would focus quite so much on "junctions" because most of those are straightforward and the individual highways can continue longer in a straight line than the UK is long... but it could still be quite interesting with what one drives by and maybe road development.

One thing I've been really truly interested in since I moved to Washington State 20 years ago is how I-90 is so really heavily engineered as one crosses the Cascade Mountains. And I just know the original road route is under there someplace. I'm starting to do this research now, but yes, that historic highway is remembered, but I'm not sure it still exists. Would be an interesting trip that would take MUCH longer than now.

This is a really interesting series that gets way deeper than you might expect, as with the episode that gets into Lockerbie's roads, but is also full of a lot of wit and really biting observations. And it got me thinking pretty deeply about the place in which I live myself.
posted by hippybear at 9:15 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]

Hippybear: to understand the numbers for motorways, you've first got to understand the numbers for the A roads that came before (and some of which we can blame the Romans for.) This page will sort you out, but basically its a pair of sort of fans centred on London (in England) and Edinburgh.
posted by YoungStencil at 10:23 PM on January 21

Also, is there a rhyme or reason to the road number system in the UK? There is one in the US that is actually easy to understand and explain, but I'm unable to tell through these videos if there is for the UK.
Its worth mentioning that there are different naming conventions in operation in Scotland versus England. This means that the road running south from Glasgow to England starts off being called with M74 (a Scottish Created motorway that was once the A74) and ends up being called the M6 - English initiative - but also includes the A74M. The latter is also a motorway but the planners appear to have wanted to particularly emphasize e that it was once an A road.

This is probably why the UK has no songs with the simplicity of Route 66.
posted by rongorongo at 10:58 PM on January 21

Road numbers in Great Britain are based on sectors radiating from London. There are many roads that cross between sectors or have been extended or diverted and their numbering can seem arbitrary.

Motorways were given roughly the same number as the A road they were intended to parallel. The length of each motorway means many of these are in completely the wrong sector, or nowhere near the A road with the same number.

There’s also the silly case of A roads upgraded to motorway standard, which have been given Axxxx (M) numbers. Often these were even built on a different route to the old road, which then needed its own new number.
posted by grahamparks at 1:03 AM on January 22

rongorongo: This is probably why the UK has no songs with the simplicity of Route 66.
Emphatically not part of the UK, but The Sawdoctors' N17 commemorates the main road between Galway and Sligo.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:10 AM on January 22

Billy Bragg: A13, Trunk Road to the Sea

And live.
posted by Grangousier at 1:30 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Kula Shaker, 303

tribute to the A303, direct route to the West Country
posted by el_presidente at 1:46 AM on January 22

I've enjoyed watching these over the past year or so, in spite of having spent far too much of my life staring at brake lights across a fair percentage of the overcrowded English motorway network, and having a healthy loathing of many of these roads as a result. The M1 is probably the one I've covered most miles on, but my personal least favourite is the entire M6 south of the M56, which for some reason seems to have particularly sticky tarmac, and is therefore permanently plagued with some of the most frustrating start-stop traffic jams I've ever been stuck in. One of the few good things to come out of the pandemic for me is that my various employers were forced to acknowledge that I can do my job for them perfectly well without having to spend 8 hours driving to and from their offices on the regular, and I've not driven for work since 2020 as a result. I don't miss the motorways at all.

This series is a little YouTube gem, and covering every motorway in the country is an impressive achievement. Interested to see what he does next.
posted by tomsk at 7:28 AM on January 22

So, in the playlist it is episode 56, in chronological order that makes it episode 24?... there is Secrets of Secrets of the Motorway - The Documentary, a 20 minute behind-the-scenes video. It's delightful in its own way.
posted by hippybear at 12:40 PM on January 22

This page will sort you out, but basically its a pair of sort of fans centred on London (in England) and Edinburgh.
A great trivia question for Brits would be to show them this map (taken from the source page) and ask them what it is showing. In one image it explains the fundamentals of why all British roads are named the way they are: the dual hubs of London and Edinburgh from which radiate sectors numbered anti-clockwise 1-6 for London and 7-9 for Edinburgh. Add just a few more rules concerning roads which cross between sectors and suddenly the naming logic of every A road is crystal clear! (let's leave aside the madness of the map, the torrent of exceptions and the particular difficulty in translating from A road names to motorway names; take any victory where we can!)
posted by rongorongo at 11:50 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Another english road song - about a french road the National 7 though.
An important stretch for us buskers in the 60’s.
Wizz Jones
https://youtu.be/JfxozjP-0Pc?si=nKHA1pFR7sp1ZKxn
posted by jan murray at 1:20 AM on January 23