page_title: Westway (London)
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Westway (London) / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Westway &amp; Harrow Road, W2 One of the few places in Britain where you get double tier roads, above is Westway the former A40(M), below Harrow Road the A404.
context_page_description: The Westway is a 2.5-mile elevated dual carriageway section of the A40 trunk road in West London running from Paddington in the east to North Kensington in the west. It connects the London Inner Ring Road to the West London suburbs.
  The road was constructed between 1962 and 1970 to connect the proposed London Ringways motorway scheme to Paddington, and opened as the A40. It was the first urban motorway project in London and attracted criticism for the lack of care over the environment, the well-being of local residents and communities, and handling those whose homes would be demolished. Road protests increased following its opening. In 2000, the Westway was downgraded to an all-purpose road after the formation of Transport for London. The road has become a significant London landmark and has been noted in several works of popular culture.
context_section_description: The Westway was funded by the GLC with a 25% grant from central government. The main contractor was John Laing & Sons, while the flyovers at the eastern end were engineered by Sir Bruce White and Partners.
  The road was planned to support three lanes in each direction, but was upgraded to include hard shoulders in 1966. The route was chosen to follow the easiest path from Western Avenue to Paddington which paralleled existing railway lines. To the east, the GLC had purchased slums between Harrow Road and the Grand Union Canal for redevelopment, and the Westway was planned to run along the southern edge of this. An elevated road was cheaper to construct and required less land to be directly built on, and had worked well for previous road construction projects, such as elevated section of the M4 from Chiswick to Langley and the Five Ways interchange at Hendon. However, passing an eight lane elevated motorway through a densely populated area involved the clearance of a large number of buildings adjacent to the railway, particularly in the area west of Westbourne Park, where several roads were truncated or demolished to make way for the concrete structures. London County Council architect Hubert Bennett speculated that some sections of the road viaduct would pass within 20 feet (6.1 m) of people's homes. 
  Compulsory purchases of properties began in 1962, with an estimated 3,356 people needing to be rehoused. Many properties on the line of the route were put on short-term rental or left derelict. The local area was disrupted by the flow of heavy goods traffic moving materials to the construction site and taking spoil away. The road was mostly constructed from pre-stressed and post-tensioned concrete, which was cast offsite and moved into position as required. Tensioning cables were then passed through conduits cast into the sections and tightened to achieve the bearing capacity necessary to carry the weight of traffic. Joints between sections were minimised in order to provide a smoother journey. The road was designed with a main speed of 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) aside from the sliproads, which were designed for 30 miles per hour (48 km/h). All elevated sections of the road were designed to support HA loading plus 45 units of HB loading in any direction.
  Prince Charles visited the construction work in 1968, aged nineteen. The road was opened to traffic by the Minister of Transport John Peyton and junior transport minister Michael Heseltine on 28 July 1970 at a total cost of £30 million (£467 million in 2019), and classified A40(M). At its opening the road was the largest continuous elevated structure in Europe and was constructed with some advanced features, such as heating grids on slopes to control the formation of ice. After completion a corridor of wasteland remained below the motorway, which the government had no plans to develop.
caption: The Westway running above a rerouted Harrow Road as a double-decked road structure
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