- A 5-mile stretch between J10 and J11 will close from 9pm Friday till 6am Monday
- The £317 million project due to be completed in the summer of 2025
National Highways has told drivers to ‘decorate the bathroom or something’ while the M25 is closed for a full weekend for the first time.
A five-mile stretch of the motorway in both directions between junctions 10 and 11 will be closed from 9pm on Friday till 6am on Monday morning, to allow engineers to safely demolish a bridge and install a new overhead gentry.
The £317 million project due to be completed in the summer of 2025 will see four more closures of the ring road happen before September.
While urging people to not travel Jonathan Wade, project leader at National Highways, said: ‘Please, if you can either avoid travelling completely, find something to do at home – decorate the bathroom or something, or play in the garden.’
Many regular M25 users are set to exit the road before the lengthy official diversion route, instead passing through areas dotted around the route, including Woking, Chertsey, Addlestone, Weybridge, Sheerwater, West Byfleet, Byfleet and Cobham
Jonathan Wade, Senior Project Manager, during a site visit ahead of the planned closure
National Highways has issued an alert as it braces to shut a five-mile stretch of the motorway between junctions 10 and 11
National Highways said the action is necessary to demolish a bridge and build a new gantry
‘If you must go, travel by train, walk, use a bicycle. I don’t mind really what you do.
‘Avoid driving anywhere around those diversionary routes around Painshill, Byfleet, West Byfleet on the eastern side of Woking. It will be in your interests,’ he told The Independent’s travel podcast.
He said that the upgrades were necessary as currently the M25-A3 intersection ‘simply cannot handle the volume of traffic that it’s currently being asked to handle’.
However, it will be the first ever scheduled daytime all-lanes shutdown of the M25 since it first opened in 1986.
Motorists should expect heavy traffic as the M25 usually carries between 4,000 and 6,000 vehicles in each direction for every hour.
National Highways senior project manager Daniel Kittredge added: ‘If people move away from diversion routes that we prescribe, it creates additional issues in different parts of the road network.
‘The majority of the time that will be local roads, so that really impacts residents in those particular areas.’
A 5-mile stretch of the motorway between junctions 10 and 11 in Surrey will close in both directions from 9pm on Friday until 6am on Monday
It will be the first scheduled daytime all-lanes shutdown of the M25 since it opened in 1986
It is estimated that the 10 mile diversion for the five-mile stretch of the motorway will take one hour longer than usual
He continued: ‘That’s why we’re trying to encourage people to not follow the satnav.
‘Stick on the prescribed diversion route. It’s going to be more suitable for your journey.’
National Highways has set out a diversion route that more than doubles the five-mile distance between the two junctions, warning of delays of up to an hour.
Motorists will be forced to detour more than 10 miles around northern Surrey, via Cobham, Byfleet, West Byfleet and Sheerwater before rejoining the motorway at Chertsey.
Nearby trains run by South Western Railway are operating normally over the coming weekend except for a line closure between Hampton Court and Surbiton.
