Looking back at the original M54 fifty years on and how it became one of Britain's most troublesome motorways
Long in the planning, delayed in the building, and botched in the execution, the M54 is marking 50 years of not always golden motoring.
Not the M54 as we know it today, but the original M54 opened on December 11, 1975, which arguably went from nowhere to no place, a stranded and relatively short stretch of carriageway divorced from the main motorway network.
It did, however, provide a bypass for Wellington, and was actually known as the M54 Wellington bypass.
It was built at a cost of more than £11 million, but that was on the cheap because it was a motorway so bad that they more or less literally had to build it twice.
Running for 4.5 miles, traffic joined using a slip road between the Hollinswood and Priorslee traffic islands, and the road ran south of Wellington to Cluddley in the west, where traffic linked up to the A5.
Here's the damning verdict on Shropshire's first motorway from John Carrington, the former group engineer (construction) in the Midland Road Construction Unit headquarters, writing in his book The Motorway Achievement: "There were elements of the design that left much to be desired. The bridges in particular were poor, both from the point of view of constructional detail and aesthetics.
