M31 motorway

The built section of this motorway is now the A329(M).

There were original plans for a Reading to M3 motorway whick was dubbed the 'M3 - M4 link motorway' which would serve traffic travelling towards the south coast and Kent from the M4 corridor and vice versa instead of taking the longer route round Ringway 4. This was planned at the same time as the London Ringways - which of course was later scrapped (mostly).

Planned Route

The M31 was planned to start on a trumpet junction with the M3, just north of Junction 3. It would have then skirted the east of Bagshot and had a junction with the A322 and the A332 just north of Bagshot. The motorway wold have then turned west and gone through Bracknell forest to its next junction on the south west of Bracknell, at the crossroads between the A3095 and the B3430. The M31 would have turned north toward the current terminus of the A329(M) where it meets the A329 and the B3408. It would have then followed the current line of the A329(M) and would have terminated where the A329(M) does today.

However when the planners noticed that the section between the M4/Ringway 4 junction (M4 junc 4/M25 junc 15) and the M3/Ringway 4 junction (M3 junc 2/M25 junc 12) was going to be liable to stop in a traffic jam due to the sheer level of traffic (something which they were not wrong about) the planners decided to extend the M31 south of its terminal with the M3 to Ringway 4 to act as a bypass to the existing route. The planned extension would have then seen the motorway extend southeast to just north of Woking, where there would have been a junction situated on the current crossroads of the A245 and the A320. the motorway would have then led in a easterly direction, terminating on Ringway 4 just west of the Ringway 4/A3 junction (M25 junc 10). However the plan was dropped and all that was built was the current A329(M).