M2 motorway
From Free net encyclopedia
- There are also M2 motorways in Northern Ireland, Hungary and Australia
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)) that does not meet any other motorway at a junction (whilst the M57 and M67 do not connect to other motorways directly, they do meet other motorways at junctions which briefly require the motorist to use all-purpose roads to get from one to the other).
The M2 is also the longest motorway not to go past any primary destinations (westbound it is signed "London", eastbound "Canterbury, Channel Tunnel, Dover", none of which are anywhere near the M2 itself).
Contents |
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
| M2 Motorway | ||
| Westbound exits | Junction | Eastbound exits |
| Road continues as A2 to London | Start of Motorway | |
| Rochester, Grain A289 | J1 | Rochester A2 Gillingham, Grain A289 |
| Rochester, West Malling A228 | J2 | Rochester, West Malling A228 |
| Maidstone, Chatham, Rochester A229 | J3 | Maidstone, Chatham A229 Channel Tunnel (M20) |
| Gillingham A278 | J4 | Gillingham A278 |
| Medway Services | ||
| Maidstone, Sheerness A249 The WEST (M20, M25) | J5 | Maidstone, Sittingbourne, Sheerness A249 |
| Faversham, Ashford, Kent A251 | J6 | Faversham, Ashford, Kent A251 |
| Canterbury, Channel Tunnel, Dover, Faversham A2 | J7 | Canterbury, Dover, Channel Tunnel A2 |
| Start of Motorway | Road continues as A299 to Ramsgate | |
History
The M2 was constructed in the 1960s, 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 1990s. Traffic using it decreased when the M20 was completed from 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 1990s.
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 was built (the existing one now only has the 4-lane eastbound carriageway, the westbound carriageway 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,