History
The M48 was opened as part of the M4 in 1966. Before this date traffic between South West England and South Wales was either taken through on a motorail service through the Severn Tunnel, used the Aust Ferry (which was unsuitable for large goods vehicles) or travelled through Gloucester to pass north of the Severn Estuary.
After opening the route became increasingly busy so, in 1984, a report was commissioned into a Second Severn Crossing. After four years of construction this new route was opened in 1996 and the M4 was diverted over the newer bridge. The original stretch of motorway was renumbered as M48 and now shares the traffic between England and Wales.
Read more about this topic: M48 Motorway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)