The M-40, in Spanish transport, is a

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

orbital

motorway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

. It is the second-outermost of the Madrid orbital highways, the M-30 being the closest to the centre of Madrid. It surrounds 17 out of the 21

districts of Madrid Madrid, the capital of Spain, is divided into 21 districts, which are further subdivided into 131 administrative wards. Additional neighborhoods exist outside the boundaries of administrative borders. Each district is governed by a body named ''J ...

Only the outermost districts of Barajas,

Vicálvaro Vicálvaro is a district in the southeast of Madrid, Spain. It is named after the former municipality absorbed into the municipality of Madrid in 1951. History When Spain's Civil Guard ( es, Guardia Civil) was established in 1844, the first headq ...

Villa de Vallecas Villa de Vallecas (''Village of Vallecas'') is one of the 21 districts of the city of Madrid, Spain. It forms, with the district of Puente de Vallecas, the geographical area of Vallecas. Geography Subdivision The district is administratively di ...

and Villaverde lay outside the M-40. and the contiguous town of

Pozuelo de Alarcón Pozuelo de Alarcón () is a municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain. Bordering the Moncloa-Aravaca district of Madrid proper to its west, Pozuelo de Alarcón is surrounded by large Mediterranean pine-tree forests: the Casa de Campo, the ...

. In terms of length and surface surrounded, it may be compared to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

and South circular roads, or

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

' A86 ''super-périphérique''.

Overview

The M-40 is the second highway belt of Madrid and was built between 1989 and 1996.ABC
(Spanish newspaper) The last section of the M-40 opens today It has a total length of , looping around Madrid and its suburb

at a mean distance of to the

Puerta del Sol The Puerta del Sol (English: "Gate of the Sun") is a public square in Madrid, one of the best known and busiest places in the city. This is the centre ('' Km 0'') of the radial network of Spanish roads. The square also contains the famous clo ...

. The actual distance is much closer in the southern and eastern spans, which have been engulfed by the city in some points; than in the west, where the

Casa de Campo The Casa de Campo (, for Spanish: ''Country House'') is the largest public park in Madrid. It is situated west of central Madrid, Spain. It gets its name 'Country House' because it was once a royal hunting estate, located just west of the Ro ...

and the projection towards Pozuelo brings it further from Madrid itself. Furthermore, it is the only one of the several ring roads serving Madrid that runs as a full-fledged motorway for all its length: a span about long at the northern arc of the inner M-30 are not freeway-grade, having level crossings and traffic lights; while the outermost M-50 is not a full ring road due to the interruption caused by the Mount of El Pardo protected natural zone. With the "normal" M-40 traffic already being one of the heaviest in Spain, this provides for mighty jams in its northern span during

peak hour A rush hour (American English, British English) or peak hour ( Australian English) is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice every weekday: ...

s. The Madrid regional government, which built the M-45 motorway external to the M-40 specifically to decongest the southern and eastern spans of the older beltway, has recently aired plans to address the northern jams by effectively "closing" the M-50 ring with a tunnel under the protected area. Somewhat counterintuitively to foreigners and natives alike, the ''M'' in the road name does ''not'' indicate a hypothetical ownership of the road by the autonomous regional administration. Instead, both the M-40 and the M-50 are state-owned freeways, as shown by the white text on blue background of their signals, whereas Madrid regional motorways like the M-45 use black text on an orange background that identify them as pertaining to the "regional first order roads" category of the Spanish Traffic Code. The M-30, on the other hand, is managed by the Madrid City Council as an urban freeway.

References

Notes

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Autopista De Circunvalacion M-40 Transport in Madrid Transport in the Community of Madrid Ring roads in Spain