Major motorway to close four days in a row for ‘essential’ works as drivers sent on 40-minute diversion
A MAJOR motorway is set to close on four consecutive days for “essential” works, with drivers sent on a 40-minute diversion.
An 11-mile stretch of the route, one of the busiest in the UK, will be shut down this week.
Announcing the measures in a Facebook post, National Highways: East confirmed that a portion of the M1 would be cordoned off as workers carried out “essential resurfacing”.
The repairs will also include replacing CCTV cameras and digital gantry boards.
The first such closure took place last night (April 17) and three more are scheduled for the coming days.
There will be a “full overnight closure” of the northbound carriageway between junctions 10 and 13 between 10pm and 5am this evening.
This covers the area of Bedfordshire between Luton South and Bedford.
Drivers are being urged to allow up to an extra 40 minutes for their journey to account for the diversion.
The southbound carriageway will remain open.
However, tomorrow night, it will be the southbound section that closes during the same hours, while traffic will be allowed on the newly refurbished northbound route.
Then, on Saturday, the same part of the road will close again, but this time motorists are only advised to add 25 minutes onto journey times.
Social media commenters were less than pleased with the idea.
One local resident wrote: “No sleep for us again as all the lorries squeezing through our tiny town.”
Another joked: “Hopefully we can lose some of the craters it looks like the moon.”
The M1 is one of the UK’s busiest motorways, with around 300,000 Brits using the 193-mile route every day.
The post from National Highways added: “We’re carrying out essential resurfacing, replacing CCTV and message signs on the M1 between junction 10 (Luton South) and junction 13 (Milton Keynes South/Bedford).
“To do this work safely, we’ll need to close the M1 between 10pm and 5am when traffic is at its lowest.”