Ranked and rated: Britain’s best and worst motorways
Britain’s motorways are wonderful, except for the cars, caravans, lorries, grim service stations, high petrol prices and contraflows.
While we are wont to wax logistical about US Interstates, Aussie freeways and German autobahnen, few of us love our big blue roads – despite more than 65 years of coexistence. The Strategic Roads User Survey, based on 9,000 commuters’ opinions, gave the M6 a 66 per cent overall satisfaction rate, making it the lowest-rated motorway. Comments included “terrible tarmac” and “matrix signs not up to date”. The M5 came out best because “signage was clear for roadworks that were taking place.” Hardly the stuff of folksongs and road movies.
But we depend on our 2,300 miles of motorways for domestic holidays, and at this time of year to beat the bank holiday rush. So which is the best? We judged 10 of the main contenders according to functionality, food and drink, history and mythology. Tap or click the thumbs up or thumbs down to vote for your favourite.
10. M3
This 59-mile shorty is very Home Counties, very commuterland – birthing just south of Richmond, skimming Camberley, Fleet, Farnborough, Hook, Basingstoke and Winchester on its way to Eastleigh and Southampton, following a route through Hampshire that was, in medieval times, vital (at the time, Sussex was a turnip-eating backwater, relatively speaking).
Functional, dull and hated by residents for its noise pollution, the M3 is often shunned in favour of the marginally more scenic and almost-as-fast A3 – it therefore scores last in our ranking.
Points of interest: 1/10
Kempton Park Reservoirs; Windlesham Golf Club; Wentworth Club
Services: 1/10
Just two – a Welcome Break and a Moto – both dire.
Traffic: 3/10
Busier than you’d think; the M3/M27 interchange welcomed 218,350 vehicles per day in 2023.
X-factor: 0/10
None
Total score: 5/40
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9. M8
Scotland’s busiest motorway runs for 60 miles from the Clyde to the once Trainspotting-esque suburb of Sighthill, providing a heaving jugular between the two big cities. It’s a novelty in the British system as it cuts through central Glasgow, helping it retain its most polluted city crown.
Points of interest: 5/10
Sawtooth Ramps; the 79-foot Horn sculpture at Polkemmet Country Park; Seven Lochs wetland park; lots in Glasgow, including the Tenement House and West End.
Services: 1/10
Only one, Heart of Scotland run by (that famous food chain) BP.
Traffic: 3/10
Upwards of 150,000 vehicles per day, so busy as hell. Awful rush hours at either end. Roadworks and accidents galore.
X-factor: 3/10
The M8 has undeniable urban heft. It would feel like Phoenix’s Interstate 10 or the New Jersey turnpike if it didn’t rain quite so much.
Total score: 12/40
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8. M25
London’s 117-mile orbital, opened in stages between 1976 and 1986, is famous as both the busiest and the worst of all the nation’s driving experiences. Around 51.6 billion miles are driven in the South East of England in a year – 16 per cent of all traffic – and four of the five busiest motorway sections are on the M25.
The motorway is singularly unloved because of its hope-sapping circularity, the sense that you’re careering through suburbia – forever. Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital is the standard text: “The line of traffic advancing towards the rising sun looked like a procession of the returning dead.”
Points of interest: 6/10
RHS Garden Wisley, Runnymede, Windsor Castle, Chessington World of Adventures. More here.
Services: 2/10
Four fairly lousy franchises. The Extra at Cobham, with 980 car parking spaces and 36 car fuel pumps, is the biggest service station in the UK.
Traffic: 2/10
204,000 vehicles per day on the M25 West between the A1(M) and the M23: the busiest stretch of motorway in the UK.
X-factor: 4/10
Waiting for Godot reimagined in tarmac, traffic and tension.
Total score: 14/40
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7. M5
The tourists’ favourite, this is how most of the UK gets to Devon and Cornwall, though the motorway stops near Exeter. Has a nice lofty section at Gordano – when the westbound carriageway rises above the eastbound one.
Points of interest: 1/10
Morrisons distribution depot; giant car park at Severnside; Brent Knoll on the Somerset Levels; the Willow Man near Bridgwater was allowed to disintegrate.
Services: 6/10
Gloucester Services, operated by the Westmorland group, has wooden cabins and looks better than the plastic anti-palaces run by Moto et al – though “farm shop” is stretching it a bit.
Traffic: 3/10
92,000 vehicles per day on average – more than the M4.
X-factor: 7/10
The M5 has a holiday vibe, mainly due to the caravans and second-homers packed into SUVs.
Total score: 17/40
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6. M1
The 193-mile M1, opened in 1959, was Britain’s first full-length, inter-urban motorway, connecting London and Leeds. It was born without crash barriers or speed limits, and had soft shoulders – which is, somehow, a very Fifties sentence.
JG Ballard, author of Crash, thought the opening of motorways more culturally relevant than Look Back in Anger: “The laying down of the M1 was much more important than anything Jimmy Porter’s father-in-law thought about this or that. The motorway system had a much bigger influence on freedom and possibility”.
The M1 resurrected Roman straightness and introduced the UK to speed and its dangers.
Points of interest: 6/10
Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Tinsley Viaduct two-tier road bridge; Meadowhall shopping centre; Emley Moor mast; Lofthouse interchange; Kegworth air disaster memorial; more here.
Services: 5/10
Newport Pagnell was the first service area to open; Watford Gap was almost co-synchronous. Leicester Forest East services is based on an Italian design used on the Autostrade. Leeds Skelton has a lake.
Traffic: 3/10
Busy and bad-tempered either side of the M6.
X-factor: 4/10
A sort of first. It’s not the A1, at least – but it got its number one thanks to that awful road.
Total score: 18/40
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5. M4
There is something hopeful about travelling west on the M4. Few motorways provide such a contrastive clout as mounting the flyover at Chiswick and, four hours later, sidling off the motorway at Pont Abraham to plunge into rural Carmarthenshire.
Progressing along the 189 miles of asphalt between London and Swansea, you shed your urban woes, leaving behind Heathrow Airport, Home Counties speedsters, the traffic snarl around Bristol and the speed traps near Newport.
Points of interest: 5/10
Heathrow Airport, North Wessex Downs AONB, Severn Bridge, Port Talbot steelworks.
Services: 4/10
Bad and declining with each mile west, with some nowhere near the slip road.
Traffic: 3/10
The M4 carries a whopping 130,000 vehicles every day, according to data from Highways England. The Almondsbury Interchange near Bristol is one of two four-level stack interchanges on the M4 (there are only three in the UK) and the RAC warns: “When traffic is heavy, it gets extremely busy as this also connects to the M5.”
X-factor: 7/10
It’s a true urban-to-rural escape route.
Total score: 19/40
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4. M74
The M6’s Scottish extension. Originally there was no plan to change the number and the stick-on A74(M) and M74 numbers occasionally fall off to reveal an old M6 sign. The road runs for 85 miles, fording the fecund Borders and passing close to lovely Moffat, Lockerbie and Gretna, conjoined with the famous wedding theme park. South of Abington/Junction 13, it’s actually the A74(M), so technically not as high a standard.
Points of interest: 5/10
New Lanark; Beattock Summit; a Star of Caledonia landmark is planned for Gretna.
​Services: 6/10
Cairn Lodge, operated by Westmorland, is upscale. The Roadchef at Annandale Water has its own loch. Lorry drivers can get rump steak and chips for £8 at the Route 74 Truckstop. Bothwell and Hamilton were recently judged the worst for EVs in the UK.
Traffic: 4/10
Heavy freight traffic, with some of Scotland’s busiest junctions.
X-factor: 5/10
A gateway to a nation is no small thing, but it’s an underwhelming welcome.
Total score: 20/40
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3. M6
The eight-mile Preston Bypass, opened in 1958 by Harold Macmillan (afterwards taken for a spin in an Austin Sheerline limousine), was the first section of motorway to be built in the UK. Lancashire surveyor and bridgemaster James Drake had visited Nazi Germany to study the autobahnen.
The M6 is not one for completists: where it traverses the North West – along the route of a Roman Road – it’s more than 20 miles from Liverpool and Manchester, and it depends on the M1 and M74 to get people to London and Glasgow.
Points of interest: 7/10
Shap Summit; Spaghetti Junction (hard to take in when driving); the most haunted section of motorway in Britain, apparently, between Junctions 16-19; Winter Hill; Manchester Ship Canal and Mersey views from Thelwall Viaduct.
Services: 7/10
Lancaster South (Forton) has the Grade II-listed Brutalist Pennine Tower – though it came second bottom in a Transport Focus survey of 119 service stations. Rugby, also on the M6, came top. Charnock Richard was the first motorway service area to have a bridge over the motorway; Keele is an exact copy. Well-liked Tebay is also on the M6.
Traffic: 3/10
Awful between Warrington and Preston (the slowly evolving “Smart” section), horrendous near Birmingham (partly alleviated by M6 Toll, at a price). Generally nasty.
X-factor: 7/10
It was first. It’s the longest. But it doesn’t go all the way.
Total score: 24/40
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2. M40
Connecting the UK’s two biggest cities, via Oxford, the M40 is also good for Slough, Marlow, Uxbridge, High Wycombe and Stratford-upon-Avon. It crosses the Chilterns and winks at the Cotswolds. If motorways were poets, it would be Betjeman.
Ride a white van to Banbury Cross? More like an Aston Martin. The poshest motorway, and using it to escape London feels like an in-the-know act. Will HS2 turn it into a low-volume white elephant? Dream on.
Points of interest: 4/10
Chiltern Hills AONB, Blenheim Palace, Aston Rowant Cutting Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Services: 5/10
Beaconsfield has an airport lounge feel, with a Leon, Wetherspoon, Chozen Noodle, Nando’s, El Mexicana, Don Churro, Tapori Indian Street Food and Chozen Sushi. The M40 has the most EV charges per mile. No great architecture or indy services but a Which? survey found most of them clean and satisfactory.
Traffic: 9/10
Heavy but steady – but growing fast and due to exceed capacity by 2031. 91,000 vehicles per day on average, as compared with 116,000 on the southern part of the M1. Came top in the 2022 Strategic Roads User Survey and second this year. They said: “It’s the quietest and easiest motorway I use” and “a nice wide motorway with rarely too much traffic problems.”
X-factor: 7/10
Not being the M1 is the main draw. It links nicely to the M42 and M6 (Toll), so you’re soon whizzing north again.
Total score: 25/40
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1. M62
Liverpool to Hull… Irish Sea to North Sea, Red Rose to White Rose, America to Europe. There’s poetry, politics and history on the Trans-Pennine, which is economically crucial to the north in light of the botch-job that is regional rail – it ranks top of our chart.
The M62 was laid upon the former Burtonwood RAF/USAF runway, which had a pivotal role in the Berlin Airlift. It was originally planned to start in Liverpool, but the project was dropped; consequently, it starts at Junction 5.
Points of interest: 8/10
Stott Hall Farm, between the two carriageways in Calderdale; Windy Hill – highest point on the UK motorway network; George Hotel, Huddersfield, where rugby league was born (being refurbed as a Radisson); The Dream sculpture by Jaume Plensa, near St Helens.
Services: 6/10
Burtonwood services are highly rated; modernist architect Patrick Gwynne gave them a quirky hat-shape to hide water tanks and chimneys. The westbound restaurant was demolished in 2009 but the eastbound survives.
Traffic: 7/10
Often abysmal near Manchester (where it is numbered as M60) but breezier at the extremities.
X-factor: 9/10
The country’s only great coast-to-coast highway, and that wind-and-rain lashed high point feels like an event.
Total score: 30/40
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10 more motorways
There are 56 numbered motorways in the UK, including the M6 Toll and the mile-long M898, plus at least 19 upgraded A-roads with an M designation; the A8(M) is 308 yards long. To rank them all would be a Herculean undertaking. How do you judge a third of a mile of asphalt?
But there are some second-tier motorways that deserve a brief spin.
1. M20
The M20 through Kent is a headline-maker – bad news mainly – thanks to its association with migrant-carrying lorries and Brexit bottlenecks. On the upside, it leads to the Autoroute des Anglais aka the French M26 and holidays.
2. M1
Northern Ireland’s longest motorway, the M1, is not quite 40 miles long. It links Belfast and four counties, passing close to Lough Neagh and Peatlands Park in Dungannon. But it should go on to at least the western border.
3. M11
Often Google Maps’ recommendation over and against the M1 for a trip to the East Midlands and Yorkshire – is a 55-mile long link road between East London and Cambridge. It came top in the 2020 Transport Focus survey but slipped to fifth this year.
4. M90
The 36-mile M90 is Scotland’s oldest motorway and its northernmost, linking the Queensferry Crossing over the Firth of Forth to Perth. It’s a scenic fast road to the Highlands, but is twisty and infamous for having one of the tightest corners in the UK motorway network.
5. M9
The alternative, the M9, lacks the momentous river crossing but the Falkirk Kelpies – the biggest equestrian artwork in the world – are arresting (hopefully not overly so).
6. M55
Several short motorways with a 50 in their name have a liberating quality. The M55 to Blackpool is a brief (12 miles only) beachbound classic, absolutely heaving when the sun comes out; it was recently enhanced by the Preston West Distributor Road.
7. M53
The M53 is a secret highway through the Wirral, offering a back door into Liverpool via the tunnels.
8. M54
The M54, following Roman Watling Street towards Shrewsbury and Wales, feels like a decompression chamber after the M6 and the airless, viewless West Midlands.
9. M56
The M56, opened in 1981, is where Cheshire footballers open up their Overfinches. For most people, though, it’s the airport road. Along with all the other motorways in the North West it has made the region the Los Angeles of Europe – minus the sunshine, Hollywood, Malibu…
10. M60
At the other extreme, Manchester’s M60 ringroad feels like a 36-mile speedway, largely built from one dead motorway (M63) and stolen sections of the M62 and M66. Much of it is buried inside cuttings, rising to reveal Oldham’s tower blocks or Stockport Viaduct. At its western extremity there is a glimpse of the Manchester Ship Canal – liable to prompt dreams of slow travel, serene times and car-free utopias.
This story was first published in October 2023 and has been revised and updated.
