The M50 is a motorway in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire, England. Sometimes referred to as the Ross Spur, it is a connection of the M5 motorway to a point near Ross-on-Wye, where it joins the A40 road continuing westward into Wales. The motorway was fully opened in 1962.
The M50 runs between junction 8 of the M5 motorway, NNE of Tewkesbury on the Gloucestershire-Worcestershire border; and the junction with the A449, the A40 and the A465 ("Heads of the Valleys Road") taking traffic into South Wales.
Leaving the M5 at junction 8, it passes north of Tewkesbury then south of Ledbury. Between junctions 1 and 2 chiefly for these towns respectively, it crosses the River Severn on the Queenhill Bridge and Viaduct over the flood plain. After passing north of Newent, the motorway terminates at junction 4.
The construction works for the M50 were let under four contracts:
Both contracts were undertaken between 1958 and 1962:
On 3 March 1958, Harold Watkinson, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation fired a starting flare during the inauguration ceremony in Herefordshire to signal the start of construction of the M50. Junctions 1 to 4 opened in 1960 and the section between the M5 to junction 1 opened in 1962.
The route forms a strategic (that is, trunk or main) route from the Midlands and northern Britain to South Wales (also including the A449 and A40 and so was constructed as an early priority.) It is one of the few British motorways not to have been widened, instead retaining its original layout of two lanes in each direction.
In 1988, a woman was abducted from the hard shoulder of the M50 and found murdered three miles further up the motorway.
Data from driver location signs are used to provide distance and carriageway identifier information.