M2 motorway
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- There are also M2 motorways in Northern Ireland.
The M2 motorway is a motorway in England. It runs approximately twenty-six miles in Kent, acting as a bypass of the section of the A2 road which runs through the Medway Towns, Sittingbourne and Faversham. It is the only "M" motorway (as opposed to an "A-road(M)" motorway such as the A1(M)) not connected to another motorway.
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Route of the M2
The road starts near the Medway Towns and bypasses them, heading east before bypassing Sittingbourne and Faversham to end at Brenley Corner just outside Faversham. It has 7 junctions, and from these junctions roads can be accessed leading to Maidstone, Ashford, Sheerness and Canterbury.
Along the way is the Medway Bridge between Junctions 2 and 3, where the motorway crosses the River Medway. Currently the only set of service stations on the M2 is the Medway Services (formerly Farthing Corner) between Junctions 4 and 5.
List of Junctions
- Junction 1 - Rochester, Isle of Grain A289, Rochester A2 [No access to A2 westbound]
- Junction 2 - Rochester, West Malling A228
- Junction 3 - Maidstone, Chatham, Rochester A229
- Junction 4 - Gillingham A278
- Junction 5 - Maidstone, Sittingbourne, Sheerness A249
- Junction 6 - Ashford, Faversham A251
- Junction 7 - Canterbury, Channel Tunnel, Dover A2
The M2 ends at J7, however the A299 continues as a motorway-standard dual carridgeway to Margate and Ramsgate via Whitstable and Herne Bay. At J1, the A2 dual carridgeway connects the M2 to the M25.
History
The M2 was constructed in the 1960's, with the Medway bypass being constructed in 1963 and the rest in 1965. It was planned to extend the road to London and Dover, making the M2 the main route between London and the Channel Ports, but this extension never materialised.
The M2 stayed much the same until the 1990's. Traffic using it decreased when the M20 was completed with London to Folkestone in 1991, and the M2 merely remains a bypass for the Medway Towns. J1 was altered when the A289 Medway Northern Relief Road was built in the late 1990's.
The M2 was still busy from J1-4 though, and in 2000 work began on upgrading the 2-lane M2 to 4 lanes. This meant a redesign of J2 and J3, and a second Medway Bridge waas built (the existing one now only has the 4-lane eastbound carridgeway, the westbound carridgeway is on the new bridge). The Channel Tunnel Rail Link also runs on its own bridge right next to it. This work was finished in 2003.
See also: List of motorways in the United Kingdom,
External Links
- CBRD Motorway Database - M2 (http://www.cbrd.co.uk/motorway/2.shtml)
- UK Roads Portal (http://www.uk-roads.org.uk/)sv:M2 (motorväg, Storbritannien)