M5 - M50 Comments
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These are all the comments about this junction, with the newest at the top.
Simon Williams writes:
The services are backwards here. The northbound services should be south of the M50, and the southbound services should be north of it. As it stands, it is impossible to access the services when doing M50 <-> M5 south. This means the only services for people travelling to/from the M50 are Michaelwood, which is an extra 30 miles away, past Gloucester, which can get busy. A 20 mile detour around junction 7 isn't a solution.
MET has a plan:
The worst thing about this junction is the approach from the north for traffic turning west on to M50. There are two exits in very quick succession both appearing on the same ADS. The first exit is for the service area and the second for the turning traffic, only problem is that the second exit taper is so short it is easy to miss if there is slow moving traffic in the left lane. Far better to take all the traffic off at the first slip and abandon the unnecessary complication of two exits.
Presumably this would involve connecting the two sliproads together, and not just making all M50 traffic go through the service area... -Ed.
Matthew Harrison thinks things are just fine:
I use this road quite a lot when driving down to see my sister who lives in Swansea. I have never had any problems here because as you say, barely any people ever use the M50. It is however very beautiful.
Dave J has a thought:
There is an extraordinary vehicles refuge in the centre/East part of the island. This may be the (only) reason why a full roundabout is required at this junction to allow loads to stop when travelling in either direction.
Owain writes:
I remember this one as a 'trumpet' from the '80s, and when I started using it again more recently, I thought my memory had been wrong when I discovered it is not! Now I see my memory was right.
Why did they change it? It is quite ridiculous for two motorways (and no other roads) to meet in such a manner, and there is no need for a complete roundabout. If they had to insist on the roundabout formation, they could have followed the M4-M32 example, where traffic from the terminating motorway does not have to give way to the right, because the 'roundabout' is closed off at that point.
The M4/M32 roundabout was modified in this way in the early 90s and so the M50 roundabout precedes it - still a good idea though. -Ed.
Andy writes:
I think you are slightly harsh. The original junction was terrifying. Both leaving the M5 south because of the tight bend (no matter how slow you went it seemed) and joining the M5 north because of the services. The current junction may not be ideal but is a huge improvement.
PT was responsible for the trunk roads in this area at the time the junction was remodelled. He says:
The original 'trumpet', as you say, was a much better free-flow layout that the roundabout. True, some lorries did fall over on the bends in older days, but this was reduced to almost zero after I designed a rather snazzy white hatching system to reduce the slips to a single lane, highlighting the severity of the curves.
We made representations about our concerns to the designers (in far away Surrey) but they were adamant that the roundabout was the best answer - they said that, taking into all factors, such as land-take; required access to/from the service area and to/from the maintenance depot; as well as emergency traffic flow arrangements.
There was once a plan to put the new (single) service area at the roundabout - but I don't think that was a factor (?).
The thing plainly doesn't flow well though... I think it could be improved vastly with some judicious use of 'dedicated lanes' and some of that aforementioned snazzy white hatching.
