West Cross Route

The West Cross Route was one of the few short sections of the London Motorway Box to make it off the page. First conceived after the war, the Motorway Box was part of the London Ringways scheme, which mirrored plans in other cities up and down the country to build new, fast, orbital and radial roads to ease the urban gridlock caused by rocketing private car usage. By the mid 1960s comprehensive plans had been drawn up to run four concentric orbital Ringways around London. The West Cross Route would have formed the western section of the innermost Ringway 1 or Motorway Box, and was built in 1970 as the M41. Less than a mile long, it was designed to continue north east and become the North Cross Route (never built), and to be met from the south by the westernmost point of the South Cross Route (also never built). The roundabout stubs at the road’s northern end indicate where it would have continued.

The West Cross Route was one of only two sections of Ringway 1 to be completed, the other being the East Cross Route/Blackwall Tunnel Approaches between Hackney and Kidbrooke. The Greater London Council produced a leaflet in the mid 1960s, showing detailed plans for this part of the Motorway Box. The leaflet refers to the rest of the Ringways scheme as still very much a firm plan, but within ten years the entire project had been scrapped as Londoners began to witness first hand how urban motorways would transform their city.

This change in public opinion began at the Westway, a six-lane elevated road that meets the West Cross Route at its northern end and carries traffic east towards central London. Building the Westway had necessitated the demolition of hundreds of houses and was met with widespread public outcry which ultimately convinced Labour to drop plans for the Motorway Box when they gained control of the Greater London Council in 1973. The scale of the Westway, and the impact it had on the lives of those displaced by it or left living in its shadow, led to broader opposition to the London Motorway Box and was part of a sea change in public attitudes towards road building in general which would culminate in the protests at Newbury, Twyford Down and Leyton twenty years later.