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This motorway took a ridiculously long time to appear. It started off being built in tiny sections, and eventually its western terminus was in Blackburn at junction 6. It took over a decade of funny little bits of construction to get that far - by the early 1990s it had understandably been nicknamed the "road to nowhere". When (many, many, many years later) it came to be extended to Preston, the original plan to build it as an urban motorway through the middle of Blackburn was scrapped and a new alignment to the south of the town was built instead. The result is a handbrake turn onto the new section towards Preston at junction 6.
The reason the M65 exists isn't exactly clear. The reason usually quoted, and the reason the Highways Agency was allowed to build a new section connecting it to Preston despite the current political climate, was to promote the economically declining Calder Valley. The plan was to put a blue line on the map and entice business in.
But if that was the point of the M65, why connect the Calder Valley to Preston? Why not to Greater Manchester, the third largest conurbation in the country that lies just to the south? Those who worked on the early stages of the motorway near Blackburn, which were built to three-lane standard (rather than the two lane newer sections), reveal that it was originally intended as a second Pennine crossing, which progressed no further because of a lack of progress on the Yorkshire side. Iain Dobson reports that one plan had the M65 ending outside the Yorkshire Post Building - the A65 junction on the Leeds Inner Ring Road. This makes a connection to the M6 rather than Manchester more understandable. When it became clear Colne was as far east as it would go, it was finished as an economic booster instead to prevent it becoming even more of a road to nowhere than it already was.
The M65 was meant to go further west as well, forming a Preston Western Bypass, but never did, and so has possibly the weakest ending of any major motorway - it's not even given the dignity of a full roundabout or multiple exits. Everything west of the M6 can simply be considered as sliproads to the A6.
If all that isn't exciting enough for you, the M65 can't count. Its first junction is 1A, followed by 1, then 2. It also has a single-carriageway spur under motorway restrictions that joins the roundabout at the interchange with the M61: it's called the Walton Summit motorway.
Factfile
| Start | Preston (A6) |
| Finish | Colne (A6068) |
| Passes | Blackburn, Burnley |
| Length | 28 miles |
| Terminates | None |
| Spurs | None |
| Meets | M6, M61 |
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With thanks to Steven Jukes, Iain Dobson and Bryn Buck for information in this section.
