Motorway closures up a FIFTH last year causing travel misery for millions – these junctions were shut most often

Almost 70 billion vehicle miles of traffic are carried on motorways in Britain annually.

And yet ‘M’ road closures have risen 18 per cent in a year, causing delays, headaches and utter chaos for thousands of motorists every day, new research from Co-op Insurance reveals.

Data from National Highways – the Government-owned company responsible for England’s motorway network – obtained using a Freedom of Information request highlighted that the number of closures increased to more than 6,870 last year.

Incidents where there was a total closure of both carriageways, grinding the entire stretch of trunk road to a halt, rose by 14 per cent with just over 280 shutdowns recorded.

The worst affected roads have also been named and shamed, with drivers using parts of the A1M and M6 facing the most disruption.

It comes after This is Money reported at the end of May that another ‘major concern’ has been raised about British motorways, after smart motorway breakdowns were revealed to be nearly three times higher than conventional motorways.

The FOI by Co-op Insurance found that it was bad news for frequent commuters through County Durham last year, as the A1M at junction 63 northbound at Chester-le-Street was closed for most of the 12 months, making it the stretch of M-road that was off limits most in 2024.

Drivers were rerouted a shocking 127 times – at least once every three days.

The other roads with the poorest closure records were the M53 at Junction 8 northbound in Ellesmere Port and the M6 between Junction 21 and 21a in Warrington.

Notably, four out of the top 10 junction locations with the highest number of road closures last year were in Yorkshire, with three on the M621 in Leeds.

Elsewhere, three of the top 10 were in Cheshire, with two on the M53.

This year, the M6 between Junction 6 and Junction 7 near Birmingham is the stretch of road to avoid like the plague as it has seen the most motorway road closures.

Last month a another FOI submitted to National Highway by the AA found 56 per cent of breakdowns logged on England’s motorways last year happened on smart sections.

This is despite the fact that these roads only making up a fifth of the nation’s total motorway network and there haven’t been any new installations in the last two years after the Government cancelled construction of new stretches on safety fears. 

Thirteen per cent of the nation’s 1,900 miles of motorway network ‘smart’ stretches without a hard shoulder at any time, motorists risk being stranded without a safe place to pull off the road if their car suffers a mechanical issue.

Cost of car repairs are rising due to potholes

It’s not just closures and congestion that’s grinding Britain to a halt though: the state of the roads is so bad that repairs costs have gone through the roof, leaving owners with huge bills.

On Tuesday we reported how the average repair bill associated with pothole damage to vehicles is £320, according to calculations by road safety organisation IAM RoadSmart.

However, if that sounds expensive, other drivers were forced to stump up more than three times that amount to repair or replaced damaged tyres, suspension components and steering parts.

Some five per cent say they paid more than £1,000 getting their motors fixed after driving through a pothole during the 12-month period.

The poll of almost 2,000 motorists found that a fifth had been left no option but to pay for pothole repairs in 2024.