M25 motorway re-examined as a motorway route in Sir Charles Bressey's and Sir Edwin Lutyens' "The Highway Development Survey, 1937". Sir Patrick Abercrombie's "County of London Plan, 1943" and "Greater London Plan, 1944" proposed a series of five roads encircling the capital. The northern sections of the M25 follow a similar route to the World War II Outer London Defence Ring, a concentric series of tanks and pillboxes designed to slow down a potential German invasion of the capital. Little was done to progress these plans until the 1960s when the Greater London Council developed its London Ringways plan consisting of four
West London Orbital to reach Brentford and Hounslow. Taken together, this set of routes would be known as the “West London Orbital” railway. In March 2017 the West London Alliance group of local authorities commissioned a study to assess the feasibility of the line so that a decision could be taken as to whether it merited pursuing further. This study found that: In June 2017 Transport for London published the draft Mayor’s Transport Strategy, which stated that London government would work with the relevant boroughs to explore the feasibility of the proposed service, that would become the West London Orbital. In March 2018