Secrets of The Motorway - A329M 

I have to admire John's commitment to not checking the pronunciation of place names and just saying it both ways every time.

6:59 "Highways England said 'Learn how to drive' and it's been that way ever since" I've never heard a statement that so accurately describes the attitude of Highways England in their never-ending quest to avoid doing any sort of meaningful work

John is a legend for making this stuff so interesting to watch.

Excellent video on my local Motorway. (For future videos it's the Lodd-on option not load-on) Very accurate account of all the local goings on. Only one other interesting thing along the motorway you could have spoken about is the small but excellent museum of Berkshire aviation, just off the motorway next to the park.

Of course many people use the non-existent M31 since, despite having to go through Bracknell, it's still quicker than continuing around the M25 and using the M4. It would have been a very useful link for sure.

“Highways England said learn how to drive” sums up their approach really😂

Love this episode, a bit more local! Just a few points from my hazy recollection: - The M31/A329(M)/A3290 was originally supposed to link to Vastern Road in Reading centre as noted in the video. This was abandoned when they realised that they realised where they would have to cross the River Kennet (between the Thames and the railway line) sat a historically protected foot bridge apparently designed by Brunel and some people got very angry about the potential loss of a historic footbridge. Draw your own conclusions. They then replanned to take the motorway north across the Thames and Caversham Lakes, to Caverham (still in Berkshire). This would relieve the central Reading bridges of congestion, the Reading IDR (inner ring road) of congestion, and substantially relieve Sonning Bridge (one way with traffic lights) - all in Berkshire. However, Caversham Lakes are in a stub of Oxfordshire, and Oxfordshire County Council said "lol, no thanks, no benefit for us", and Berkshire County Council (and later the unitary authority successors) were once again stymied to leaving a glorious slip road to the Thames Valley Park / Microsoft & Oracle complex. - At the Winnersh triangle junction there were originally 4 slip roads as you might imagine. The 5th slip road was added later (I think I recall seeing it under construction in the 1990s), and was always solely for the buses from the cinema park & ride car park to Reading city-oh-no-its-a-town centre. The bus lane on the now-A3290 used to be all the way from the cinema slip lane to the Winnersh Triangle to Sutton Seeds roundabout (hence the length of the derating), but for some reason I recall car drivers managing to somehow get confused and drive in the bus lane, and then they abandoned it apart from the end where the roundabout congestion begins. - At the south end, at Coppid Beach roundabout, is the "glorious" Coppid Beach hotel modelled after ski chalet hotels. This is because it sits next to the former location of a dry ski slope, and if there's one thing we've learned about the UK, it's that all post-WW2 new towns like Bracknell needed a dry ski slope.

I worked in Reading for a few months in the late 90s. My abiding memory of the time was seeing a Lotus Elan, on fire and melting, on the southbound sliproad at the Coppid Beech junction on the way home one Friday evening. It didn't matter how shitty the job made me feel, I knew that at least one person had just had a worse week than me.

I love the mention about the J10 1 lane downgrade on the A329M. Its absolutely carnage, people constantly go into the wrong lane, and then swerve over at last minute. Really it should of had the two lanes merging on the other side of the second M4 exit, that way both lanes would continue through the junction, but would also allow the M4 joining traffic to have their own lane

Hi Jon. I am biased to say it’s your best episode to date. Why? Because I could see my house in your satellite view of the A329(M) near Dinton Pastures. Brilliant episode. As for the bus lane, and the abandoned park and ride which constantly flooded, resulting in the disused “on ramp” all worthy of its own video in due course.👏👏👍😀

I was under the impression that there was an intention for the A329(M) to have actually continued straight, crossing what is now the Caversham rowing lakes and the Thames, dropping onto (or probably passing over) the A4155 and continuing North towards the M40? Great video of my closest motorway anyway Jon 👍

Almost had an Art Attack watching this episode!

The M31 would have been fwicked sweet awesome. I often had to travel between Croydon and South Wales, and the Heathrow area was dire. I learned to use the M3, A323 and A329(M) route, but even then the bits that would have been bypassed by the M31 were usually the most congested part of the journey.

My local funny. There were also plans to extend the a329(m) over the river to Henley Oxfordshire council said not on your nelly

Hello Jon, how the devil are you, have you had a good week?

another notable aspect for road nerds like me is that this motorway has the last remaining 1959-style advance direction sign in England that only shows the number, I.e. no destinations; it's on the northbound approach to M4 (several of them survive in Scotland, and they're still the norm in NI)

LODD-ON. Basically, rhymes with 'modern'. As with all your vids, excellent, informative, well-edited and just.... great.

Excellent as always, Jon. I quite like the Highways Agency reply: "Learn to drive" 🤣🤣🤣

My local motorway. The park and ride has never been in use in the 10 or so years I've lived in the area - at least not as a park and ride. That and the Showcase cinema car park next to it are basically the flood plain for the river Loddon, which likes to live in the car park at least once a year. It's also just along the road where you'll find the infamous Tesla Supercharger station - the one that if you google "flooded tesla supercharger" it's the one that pops up as the image, because it too is built on a flood plain.

Ive walked this whole 6 mile stretch A329(m) and A3290 litter picking for the council 100's of times for 17 ½ years and never knew a fair chunk of this information. Thanks john 😊.

Great video! I’ve lived in Reading and surrounding areas fair amount of my early life. The M31 extension plan to the south also had twin extension plan to the north beyond Thames Valley Park to cross the Thames near Sonning to give 3rd major crossing point (the current Sonning Bridge in the village is single lane with traffic lights). There were early plans to eventually join to the M40 apparently. This third bridge idea joining with the main Henley Road resurfaced in the late 2010’s but seems to be stalled at Berkshire council want it but Oxfordshire do not….

Nice to see you back south again John, though I note you couldn't leave that heather behind

Please keep making these. Highways England need to be embarrassed into sorting themselves.if you get to the M62 might be worth seeing what a b@lls up they are making if the Ouse bridge in East Yorkshire. It was faulty from the start and caused a delay in ppening the last section. Its been under repair for years and bloody dangerous. If it was in the South, it would have been replaced but its being patched up yet again and has been bodged and had work going on for the last 2 years. Apparently another 9 months to go. Restrictions are still in place

Lived in Bracknell for near 30 years and never knew any of this stuff!!!! Fascinating!!!!

I love your humour it's infectious 😂😂

Any road to help people escape Reading has got to be worth hitting the like button.

It never ceases to amaze me how watchable this content has proven!

It's very odd/surprising to me to be recommended a video of such a familiar piece of road. I was born in Reading and live in Wokingham so I've driven up and down the A329(M) for as long as I've been driving, but I didn't know the history or the plans for an M31 that I would surely have used quite a few times by now had it existed. I've also walked that wiggly footpath visible at 7:07 which I'm sure was designed by a frustrated would-be racetrack designer!

Praise be, the weekend WOULD NOT BE THE WEEKEND without your videos. Listening to you relay a series of numbers & letters is very enjoyable as is all the other information you bring us, many thanks.

Nice to see my local Motorway feature. Just to add, the Flyover at the Copid Beech Roundabout was a later addition - for many years if traveling from Reading towards Bracknell, you had to come down a slip road and then back up the other side. The Flyover was finally added in around 1990, some 7 years after the two lane section of the A329 toward the centre of Bracknell was completed.

Another spiffing episode John 👍🏼 All very well explained about a bloody confusing situation with councils, bus lanes, A roads, and road number changes. I was hoping for “gravel pit” by Wutang clan as the outro tune, but was it the theme to Fun House ? This week I’m in my final week of working a months notice to go on to pastures new…. And never have to go to London EVER AGAIN 😁😁

Here in Stockholm they built a new bus lane exit from the E4 to a garage only to close it after a few months because so many cars would take it and get stuck. Now its closed off and Swedens most modern ruin motorway

Loddon, not loadon. You missed the excellent opportunity when mentioning said river that rises in and travels through Basingstoke, to point out that this is the river that carries the result of the Basingstoke Sewage Works at Wildmoor all the way to the Thames, and then onto London! (Send us your slum clearance overspill will you? We'll teach you!) An excellent view of the most abused motorway in the south, a strip of road that I wasted months on waiting in queues in the 80s and 90s.

Having the art attack theme for this episodes outro brought back waves of nostalgia

Ah, my old home turf - I was born in Reading and lived there for 22 years. I'm pretty sure there were junction numbers in the past and it's pronounced "Lod-un". I was only 2 at the time but I didn't know about the bridge collapse with resulting deaths and inuries - that's horrifying! When Reading had no Cinema multiplex we used to use the A329(M) to whizz over to The Point at Bracknell to the cinema there, along with bowling and TGI Fridays. Oh, and of course the artifical Ski Slope at the John Nike Leisure sports complex and Coral Reef leisure pool. I would like to say that we didn't see how fast we could go around that left-hander after the Coppid Beech roundabout in various cars on the way there without sliding off, but that would be a lie. 🤣 It used to be quite a good motorway but since they decided to start messing with it, every new incarnation has been 💩. Shame the M31 never happened, would have been awesome! Thanks for another fab episode Jon!

I can't wait for the 30-second video on the a167(m) & a194(m) both of which were part of bigger plans and just got left 😢

Hitting us with Art Attack at the end! You legend!!

That sonic music at the end really got me 😂 love it my dude.

My old neck of the woods (I grew up in Crowthorne). The A329( M) was really useful for driving to Reading ( even better now with the Coppid Beech flyover). Before you had to drive through Wokingham and the old A329 which took ages. I have mixed feelings about the planned M31. One one hand it would have been a hood linking road. On the other hand, so much forest and heath land has already been ripped up locally for development .

Mega, thanks for doing my 'local' motorway. Glad you discovered the graffiti, a hidden gem!

Ahh i remember when the A329M was a twinkle in the planners eye. You forgot to mention the famous ski jump just north of the now closed access road you were standing on. It`s been subsiding there since the 60`s.

I've drove drove on these roads for 40 years Thanks for your history of this area , your knowledge is quite interesting & informative..

I can't remember if I've mentioned my mates mum before. She had a friend who's job is to paint over the bridge graffiti there to give the artists a nice blank canvas every Friday night. My mates mum and my mates mums mate have worked there for decades. They met while shovelling gravel out of the quarry. That's why it was so small, it was hand dug by the two women.

Watching this is so intense. A complete firehose of information, most of entirely unmemorable. Why am I so compelled to watch this?

Have I had a good week..? Dunno yet I’m viewing this on a Monday…

I've lived in Reading for 5 years now. The A329M is my main route out of Reading to London or Wales. Love this episode, thanks John!

The smell of roasting meat and your humour Jon - they go together so well 🥩 🃏

The A38(M) is intersting with it being a single carriageway motorway!

The A392(M) is also one of the only motorways managed by the local authority (Wokingham Borough Council) rather than National Highways

graffiti done to that standard is definitely art, it takes a great deal of talent to produce. Tags that just say "John woz ere", that's vandalism.

Now becoming part of my Sunday night ‘guilty pleasure’…….. Mrs 6thDayBlue x

Have just started watching, fantastic presentation style, can't wait for your next video! :)

The footbridge at the start I cross every day. Unfortunately it is falling down - you can see in the video where they encapsulated the piers in further concrete a while back where it crosses the A3290. Where it crosses the railway at Earley station they have had to put netting under it to stop the rust falling on the trains!

Great video as always thanks John 👍 and I love the music at the end 👍

Thank you John for another entertaining and enjoyable video which as always is packed full of engaging information about the development of our motorway infrastructure and the process whereby they were constructed. (sadly no one video bombed you again!!)

Always makes me happy that RU-vid's automatic captions detect your emphasis on 'wicked sweet awesome' and spell it with a capital W.

Need to get yourself to Newcastle; A167 central motorway! Only part of it built, rest was scrapped, slip roads that are the thing of nightmares, and a few random abandoned parts. It’s time …..

The M31 would have saved me so much time over the last 20 years. Even going through Bracknell it is still ten minutes quicker than carrying on the M4 when coming into London.

At the end of the 70s I lived in Wokingham and the motorway just ended at Coppid beech. No Bridge over, no connection anywhere else. The A329 was the road it dropped onto and it turned left towards Bracknell. New towns being what they are it wasn't long before the Bagshot road (A322) needed an dual upgrade but that would just have dumped more traffic into the centre of Bracknell so it made sense to purloin the end of the A329(M) and bring it in to join up. Last time I was through that way it was even more of a dogs dinner because Bracknell (and surrounding areas) has continued to expand and the roads seem more overloaded than ever. The northern end always seemed quirky. Why did you need a motorway into the Sutton Seeds facility (now noved somewhere else - Toquay I think) ? Its somewhat ironic that as that traffic increases, the local council want to degrade the road and make traffic movements worse. The M31 might have been the right answer...but these days you need to take a bus so that you get a good view of the traffic you are sitting in. Given a free choice and the aid of sat-nav, avoiding the area is best.

Great stuff, John I don't know how you make this interesting - but you do! Thank you

Having the delights of occasionally working from an office not far from the Loddon interchange, this answered a bunch of nagging questions I had about the A329(M)! Thank you!

3:17 “got bored and started to make a few changes..” 😂

Jon, your films have no right to be entertaining but they somehow are; maybe I have spent too much time on Britain's fabulous motorways. Keep up the good work!

So much, so quick, I have to watch it twice. Fascinating stuff. Thanks.

I like the free art gallery concept too. There are so many boring grey concrete constructions that they need brightening up with some original artwork. I'm guessing that is why you had the theme tune to "Art Attack" playing at the end?!

Love all the outro songs... I know them from tv shows from my youth but it's a struggle to try to place exactly where they come from sometimes

Another fascinating video as always mate.

Used to live in Reading and used to cycle on this carriageway just after the roundabout where the motorway (before changing to A3290) ended going into the Thames Valley Business Park. It's still a dangerous carriageway though as I had a few close calls with fast coming traffic. Miss Reading though was here between 89-98.

Brilliant as always. My old stomping ground and happened to be back on the A329(M) two days ago for a wedding in Reading. I learned two things (1) It is very easy to miss the A4 exit and end up at the next roundabout that goes nowhere apart from an industrial estate and (b) Reading has become absolute s***hole if you want to either drive through, or even park in the place. Not what I remember at all - although it was a few years ago.

As always an awesome video, but particularly do this week as I am travelling on the A329(m) later this week. I intend to play this video to my passengers as we travel along it.

It’s definitely art. The greatest offence to the eyes is endless expanses and piles of grey concrete.

Brilliant John. Absolutely brilliant 👍

Delightfully concise, entertaining and brief

Superb theme at the end linked in to the art of this video.

Dude. You made my Sunday. Love your videos! Come back to Wales and I'll show you some fun roads!

Sunday Lunchtime viewing sorted

Interesting video - I’ve frequented this semi-regularly for my whole 15 years of driving as a bit of an M25 bypass, so really interesting to hear that the M31 could’ve been a thing - would’ve been very helpful! My favourite thing about it was that many years ago someone modified a sign just after the M4 interchange such that the downhill skier had a jet of air coming out of their arse, which still amuses me to this day even though it’s long gone :(

Nice work John. I grew up in Woodley and my parents' house is right next to the motorway near Loddon Bridge Road, their close was cut in half by its construction a few months after they purchased it, making it pretty much worthless for a time. I grew up being able to see over the top of the wall from my bedroom window. The footbridge at the start you are standing on is by Earley station and when we were kids, we used to stand on it, grip the railings and jump up and down in unison to make the bridge bounce so much, the railings would rattle. Fun times!

Highways England seem to be the root cause of so many road disasters. Well done John for highlighting their ineptitude. Great video as usual.

yes! I haven't been able to watch these for almost 2 months now. Keen to catch up!

I remember that bridge collapse in the 1970's. It happened, as you say, during construction and was virtually at the end of our road at the time. Used to travel the A329M motorway weekly back in the day. Also remember fishing in the river Loddon as a kid. Didn't catch much though. 😏

John there was some vague thought in the 1960s that there should be a bridge over the Thames to the North and that the A329M would extend that way - Reading was unsure where new building would be and declared that the M4 would be the urban boundary to the South. As usual others may know more, that was what I was told when I studied the university many, many years ago.

Thanks John 👌

Absolutely brilliant matey 💯👍🤟

I travel into Reading frequently on the adjacent railway line and have often wondered about that abandoned sliproad, thanks Jon for explaining the reasoning behind it 🙂

I think it would of been interesting if we got the m31 along with all of the ringways plans from the 1940s, which meant getting ringway 3 and ringway 4 rather than the m25

This is my local area and this was fascinating. Thank you.

The Reading extension would have joined the proposed but cancelled Reading rjngway. The old Prudential offices in what is now Forbury Square we’re on the route and we’re built with a gap underneath big enough for 4 lanes of traffic.

Loving the Art Attack theme tune at the end 😆

Another great episode, now my Sunday is complete. All the very best to all, 👍👊✌️🌍.

The A329 m was supposed to continue over the Thames to the Caversham to Henley road to relieve the bottle neck that is Sonning! It can take over 30 mins to drive through Sonning in the rush hour, it's a beautiful village if it was bypassed it would be so much more enjoyable...

1:06 - I'm guessing this was a different Highways Agency to the one that allowed a bus lane on the M4 between Heathrow and London.

You could easily do a tour of the M31 and all the other motorways that weren't. In the case of the m31 i heard that there was a plan to bridge the Thames at reading to improve north / south flow

Quite a talent to make parts of the country I'll probably never visit interesting. Keep up the good work 👍

And one thing you didn't mention is the blue marker posts still along the former section of motorway

Thanks for another interesting vid. Love the Art Attack theme tune. RIP CITV.

Note: for non-locals “the Council” mentioned in this is Wokingham. The A329(M) doesn’t actually enter Reading Borough Council boundaries.

Yey the A329 (M)! A great motorway - and I was on the Coppid Beech roundabout just a couple of weeks ago.

Another really interesting video from John and having the Art Attack music at the end wasn't lost either.

You didnt mention the dead straight measured mile that is marked out with yellow/red discs coming from reading to the Winnersh junction on the now A3290. Tested a few cars on that bit of road over the years…….