Why is there no junction 31 on the m4?
probably the same reason the M11 starts a J4. Just that I don`t know what it is.
Same reason there is no junction 3 on the M1 … very spooky tbh
Don’t know, but Pathetic Motorways is a good website to start to find answers to this type of question.
M55 near me has J1, 3 & 4. No J2.
It was originally intended the M65 would be extended west of Preston & then swing north to connect with the M55 thus forming a Preston box like Manchester & Birminghamn have.
bubsy06:
Why is there no junction 31 on the m4?
Plans for the “missing” Junction 31, also known as the Thornhill interchange, which was originally granted planning permission in September 1991 (but subsequently expired) have been rekindled after proposals for a new business park on a 125 acres (51 ha) site north of the M4 were submitted to Cardiff Council.[19] The developers of the business park, St Modwen Developments, would likely fund the new junction, which would be on the A469.[20]
wikipedia is your friend. 
You lads are lucky.My 1965 AA atlas shows the M4 stopping west of Maidenhead.
The M5 stops at the junction with the M50.
Back in the 1990’s the old bill couldn’t believe it when I stopped & asked which junction for Wellington,Somerset.My AA 1976 atlas showed the M5 stopping at Gloucester.
It was the best one I ever had 'til it fell apart in 1997.
Couldn’t believe the price(or the rubbish quality)of a new one.
By the way,my 1965 atlas is on a shelf in my house.
Don’t ask me about Scotland or Northern Ireland,as it’s “The road book of England & Wales”.
Was that a brown leathery AA atlas? IIRC it had a clear plastic page with a grid pattern on it so you could work out rough distances between places.
bubsy06:
Why is there no junction 31 on the m4?
■■■■■■ nicked it 
I remember when the M! stopped at The Blue Boar
there used to be many years ago as you drove along M4 where the A469 goes over it from Birchgrove to tongwynlais i think a set of ghost slip roads.
what i mean is you could see where the slip roads were going to go by the different shaped embankments but they may have gone in recent road widening or other roadworks, its many years since i passed that stretch i’m afraid 
There are junctions 1 & 2 on the M6 at Rugby & Coventry. But between the 2 there is a set of ghost slip roads for an obiously planned junction.
Driveroneuk:
There are junctions 1 & 2 on the M6 at Rugby & Coventry. But between the 2 there is a set of ghost slip roads for an obiously planned junction.
Ah yeah i’ve often wondered about those, i think possibly it may have been intended for a service area, or works unit…
I often wonder why they never bothered building a link to the M6 north from the M54. Probably down to lack of money or someone not being arsed
Driveroneuk:
There are junctions 1 & 2 on the M6 at Rugby & Coventry. But between the 2 there is a set of ghost slip roads for an obiously planned junction.
Those building the junctions had the plans upside down and they only realised after they started to build… OK, probably not true but it sounded good 
Can anyone answer this trivial question which came up at the start of a BBC Radio Wales (or whatever it is) traffic report a year or so ago and has puzzled me ever since, as I got a (hands free) phone call just after it was posed, and annoyingly all I heard was that Mark Buckley chuckling away at the end of the report:- “Which junction on the M4 has the entry slip before the off slip?” or something like that. I’ve been all the way up and down the M4 (not looking for the junction in question but concentrating on driving) and can’t work it out but it must be obvious to many.
DaveL:
You lads are lucky.My 1965 AA atlas shows the M4 stopping west of Maidenhead.The M5 stops at the junction with the M50.
Back in the 1990’s the old bill couldn’t believe it when I stopped & asked which junction for Wellington,Somerset.My AA 1976 atlas showed the M5 stopping at Gloucester.
It was the best one I ever had 'til it fell apart in 1997.
Couldn’t believe the price(or the rubbish quality)of a new one.By the way,my 1965 atlas is on a shelf in my house.
Don’t ask me about Scotland or Northern Ireland,as it’s “The road book of England & Wales”.
thats better than my [zb] Nav…was coming back from Paddock Wood the other wk, had the route in from there to here so that it would get the traffic info and was probably just over a mile from the M23 slip when it piped up ‘in 1 mile, continue to the left & follow the signs for the M4’ 
In Spain the junctions are marked by the nearest kilometer marker, which is a brilliant idea, this Saturday I will be driving to Vera in Almeria and know the junction I will take is junction 534, I will be able to work out the distance to that junction wherever I am as I am driving along the motorway just by looking at the Km markers. It also means that they can add as many junctions as they like and they will have no effect on the number of the junctions around them (as long as they arent within a kilometer).
schrodingers cat:
In Spain the junctions are marked by the nearest kilometer marker, which is a brilliant idea, this Saturday I will be driving to Vera in Almeria and know the junction I will take is junction 534, I will be able to work out the distance to that junction wherever I am as I am driving along the motorway just by looking at the Km markers. It also means that they can add as many junctions as they like and they will have no effect on the number of the junctions around them (as long as they arent within a kilometer).
I wouldn’t consider parking on the services at that junction with a tautliner, its not one of the “safer” places and is frequented by the overloaded vehicles going over the water if you get what i mean.
there is a decent services before vera same company as andamur bailen, decent food and parking but i can’t remember the km but its visible from the motorway
In general, missing motorway junctions are the result of cancelled road projects after the initial building of the motorway had started - i.e., too late to change the plans for the other junctions.
M23 - starts at J7, where the M23 extends out of south London into the open countryside of Surrey and Sussex - junctions 1 - 6 would have been in ‘urban’ London. But there was such uproar by the public, all the urban motorway project was cancelled, and only the rural stretch was built. I’d imagine that the missing M11 junctions are a similar story.
M27 - has no junction 6. A spur road was planned at junction 6 (likely to have been named the M272), but this was cancelled after junctions 5 and 7 had already been started.
There was supposed to be a J3 on the M1, but it was not built for whatever reason and became Scratchwood (now London Gateway) services.