One of the most maligned places in Britain is Spaghetti Junction, an interchange on the M6 Motorway just north of Birmingham’s city centre in the centre of the nation.
Despite its poor reputation, Spaghetti Junction though has a story to tell — a tale of how physical trade routes change slowly with the motorway being the latest of five major junctions in the area.
Immediately below the motorway are the major roads, connecting these and Birmingham were the reason for building Spaghetti Junction in the late 1960s.
Below those are the canals and it’s notable that just as Birmingham lies at the centre of Britain’s motorway network, it also formed the core of the industrial revolution’s canal network and much of the railway system.
Wikipedia describes how critical Spaghetti junction is for the nation’s infrastructure.
Underneath the motorway junction are the meeting points of local roads, the river Tame‘s confluences with the River Rea and Hockley Brook, electricity lines, gas pipelines, the Cross-City and Walsall railway lines and Salford Junction, where the Grand Union Canal, Birmingham and Fazeley Canal and Tame Valley Canal meet.
Despite it’s importance the area is dingy and it’s not a good idea to hang around too long, particularly when you have an expensive camera, but it’s worthwhile to linger for a few minutes to appreciate how important these links were to the industrial revolution.
Following the canals away from Spaghetti Junction gives a feeling of the post-industrial nature of Birmingham’s economy something that the city, like most of Britain, is still struggling with.
Eventually the canal ends in the city’s convention centre district where a tourist can get a safer, and better, appreciation of Britain’s canal system at the Gas Street Canal Basin.
While the basin is a bit twee and touristy it does also give a friendly overview of the canal network that replicates closely the railway system that replaced it and today’s roads.
How these trade routes evolve in the digital economy will be interesting, the recent PayPal survey on the new electronic spice routes illustrates how economies are changing.
Whether our descendents will wander the abandoned motorways and freeways in two hundred years and wonder at our industrial might is something we might want to ponder. Whether what replaces them is another layer of infrastructure is another question.