M1 Motorway

The M1 Motorway

The M1 is England's first full-length motorway, running from north London to Leeds. Our M1 website has covered it since 2011 and is one of the most visited sites in our network.

Our M1 Website

Everything you need for the M1 is on m1traffic.co.uk, updated every five minutes, 24 hours a day, from official National Highways data. It includes:

• the latest M1 traffic news
• accidents and incidents
• roadworks
• what the overhead signs are saying
• the variable speed limits in force now
• M1 junction maps
• the M1 services
• M1 traffic statistics

It is one of a family of websites from UK Traffic News, each one given over to a single road so that the news you see is about the road you are actually driving.

Information About the M1 Motorway

The M1 motorway is a major north–south motorway in England which connects London in the south to Leeds in the north.

The M1 joins the A1(M) near Aberford on the far west of West Yorkshire.

The M1 is considered to be the first "motorway" completed in the UK and the M1 stretches 193 miles (311 km) long and was constructed in four phases.

The majority of the M1 opened in 1959 and extended between 1965 and 1968. The southern end of the M1 was extended in 1977 and the northern end in 1999.

The M1 in numbers

Traffic on the M1 as counted by the Department for Transport.

about 98,000

vehicles a day

on an average stretch of the M1. The busiest stretch carries about 162,000 a day.

1 in 8

vehicles is a lorry

and about 1 in 5 is a van, so a large share of M1 traffic is people at work.

Source: Department for Transport road traffic statistics, 2025. Averages across the whole road; rounded.

See also: M1 traffic reports · all the motorways we cover.