I hop off the prepare at Byfleet & New Haw, about half a mile north of the diversion route, and head for the A245, anticipating it to be reworked into a parking lot. Cut down the alley, head down the trail in the direction of the roundabout and… Oh. Everything is okay.

Byfleet isn’t a dystopian future imaginative and prescient of a cyberpunk future the place public transport is banned and individuals are compelled to drive all over the place, choking the streets with hundreds of sorts of visitors – it’s only a small city with a highway that hardly qualifies as busy going by the center of it. Sure, there are extra lorries than regular, however the highway itself is flowing alongside like it will on every other Saturday morning.

The diversion route crosses over an eerily abandoned M25 – eight lanes of silence. A good few locals have cycled up right here to check out the empty expressway, they usually share my disbelief that it’s attainable for the diversion path to be so quiet – particularly as any M25 points have a tendency to finish up clogging their native roads.

Further alongside, West Byfleet excessive road – a traffic-light managed crossroads that was anticipated to be an enormous bottleneck – can also be flowing simply as easily because it usually would. I communicate to some store house owners, who’re simply as shocked about the entire thing as I’m.

“I cancelled all of our appointments for today, but I needn’t have bothered,” says Ian Barnes, who runs Surrounds Art on the excessive road. “I drove in super early at 6am expecting pandemonium, but it’s been even quieter than it normally is – I think that’s because it’s been advertised so well and so far in advance.”