“Good progress” has been made on the M25 in Surrey, where engineers are bringing down a bridge during the motorway’s first ever planned daytime closure.
A five-mile stretch between junctions 10 and 11 has been shut in both directions since 9pm on Friday and won’t reopen until 6am on Monday, if works finish on time.
Concerns have been raised that thousands will be held up in gridlocked traffic, despite National Highways highlighting a diversion route.
Congestion stretched for two miles on Saturday morning, according to National Highways South-East (NHSE), which estimated the average journey time through its new route was 25 minutes.
“We made good progress during the first night of the M25 J10 to J11 weekend closure,” NHSE posted on X at 9.05pm on Saturday.
“We will again work throughout the night to continue the demolition and gantry installations. There are minimal delays in the area at this time.”
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The closure is in place so the Clearmount bridge can be demolished to make way for motorway improvements, with engineers slowly chipping away at the concrete and steel structure.
But now work has begun, they cannot stop – and with no plan B, the M25 would simply remain shut for longer if the job is not completed by Monday morning.
It is the first planned daytime closure of the motorway – which encircles London – since it opened in 1986.
The diversion route, which spans 11.5 miles, was created to direct motorway traffic along A roads.
Bracing for increased traffic, some business owners revealed they scaled back their services while the closure is in place.
Among those is owner of caterer Billy Tong, Mark Pollak, who said on Friday he expects to see 50% of the firm’s turnover for the weekend go “down the drain”.
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The M25 normally carries between 4,000 and 6,000 vehicles in each direction every hour from 10am until 9pm at weekends between junctions nine and 11.
This includes many airline passengers travelling to and from the UK’s two busiest airports, Heathrow and Gatwick.
Four more daytime closures of the M25 will take place up to September.
