The M-40, in Spanish transport, is a

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

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 ...

. 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 List of wards of Madrid, 131 administrative wards. Additional neighborhoods exist outside the boundaries of administrative borders. Each district is gove ...

Only the outermost districts of Barajas, Vicálvaro,

Villa de Vallecas Villa de Vallecas (, "Village of Vallecas") is one of the 21 districts of the city of Madrid, Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the ...

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 M ...

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

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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 (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

and

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

circular roads, or

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

' 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 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 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, Indian 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 e ...

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