Asking for someone planning a journey from Portsmouth to St Albans. What's the traffic like, generally speaking, on the M3 travelling towards London on a Friday night, say around 8.30? And the M25 as well?
Or another option it may involve travelling on the sat, however there's some sort of event at Ascot. How is the traffic on M3/M25 when Ascot has an event on?
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Depends on the if the 8:30pm is leaving time, or arrival time.
If its leaving time, it will be dead easy, A3 - M25 j21 - about 1 hour 30 easy run
If its arrival time, it will be a little longer, route still the same expect slow traffic m25 j10 to m25 j16 but count on 1:45 min.
Ascot has no effect on m25
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 16 Dec 18 at 23:15
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I've just tapped the details into Waze using the "leave later" function.
Leaving Portsmouth at 20:30 on Friday 21 Dec, the journey should take 1h29m.
Leaving Portsmouth at 18:57 on Friday 21 Dec, the journey should take 1h33m.
Very little difference, as you can see.
From my personal experience, in the evening the only slow parts of traffic will be at the top end of the M3 and on the M25 from there to the M40. It's always worth using Waze, or Google Maps, and keeping Radio 2 on for the traffic updates.
All of the busy sections of your friend's route are Smart Motorwayed up now, which gives much more reliable journey times.
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>> I've just tapped the details into Waze using the "leave later" function.
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>> Leaving Portsmouth at 20:30 on Friday 21 Dec, the journey should take 1h29m.
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>> Leaving Portsmouth at 18:57 on Friday 21 Dec, the journey should take 1h33m.
Does Waze take account of this being Friday 21 December as opposed to any other Friday?
Bearing in mind Xmas Eve is Monday I think it'll be a *lot* busier than normal. Pretty sure that'll be peak travel day on the trains.
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The top end of the M3 is a LOT better since the Smart motorway between J4a and J2 went live. You could count on it being a car park Monday mornings and Friday evenings for years, but it does tend to move now, if a little slowly at times. The exits at J3 and J2 (if you're going clockwise on the M25, at least which you would be going to St Albans) are also a big improvement in terms of keeping traffic flowing.
Christmas weekend will be heavier than normal, but this is going to be balanced to a degree by the fact that many people have finished work now, so the normal commuter traffic will be reduced. This is already having an effect this week. I did a 420 mile round trip to Warrington on Monday morning, and although the roads were busy, they were considerably quieter than a "normal" Monday morning. Didn't get stuck in a queue once, and it was an easy 3 1/2 hours up there (travelling 6am - 9:30 am) and 3 hrs 20 home. It's taken me well over four before.
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M3 top end was chaos this morning. Accident J11 a/c three lanes closed. A320 M25 M3 complete mess, had to take a 9 mile back roads detour to even find the M25 north
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What time was that Z? I dropped a mate at Heathrow at 6:30 and had no issues there and back. Weather was properly foul coming back though. Spray was horrific.
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Accident happened about 7:15, full gridlock by 7:30, I had to be in Tring by 9:00 was planning to leave at 07:50, check Google maps at 7:30 saw the mess, so shot out, had to go via back roads out west to go in a big loop to hit Staines. Walton, weybridge, Chertsey all gridlocked
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Nightmare. Sounds like I dodged a bullet there.
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M3 on a Friday night - Zero
