Wednesday 24th May 1972

The 2-mile Aston Expressway, the A38(M), opened, to connecting the M6 with central Birmingham. When construction work of the motorway began in the late 1960s, many late 19th-century and early 20th-century houses in the Aston area had to be demolished to make way for the new route.

The Expressway was the first road in the United Kingdom to introduce tidal flow to allow better management of traffic. Lane use is controlled by means of electronic overhead signs, with one lane always closed to create a buffer between the two directions of travel – there is no central reservation. In the morning, four of the seven lanes are designated for use by traffic heading toward Birmingham city centre, and two lanes for traffic out of the city. In the evening rush hour, this pattern is reversed and four lanes are made available to outbound traffic and two lanes towards the city centre. At all other times, the road runs with three lanes in each direction. Due to the nature of the road, the speed limit is reduced to 50 mph (80 km/h) for most of its length with a very short length of 30 mph (48 km/h),though there are no permanent speed cameras.

Motorcycles are banned from the red-surfaced central lane, which contains a drainage channel, regardless of how it is being used. This follows a fatal accident which occurred when one of the drainage covers dislodged