M1 Traffic on Mondays

Monday is when the working week restarts on the M1: commuters heading into north London and Milton Keynes, vans and lorries leaving the warehouses around Northampton and Daventry, and people who went home for the weekend making their way back.

This page shows how the most recent Monday went, northbound and southbound, hour by hour. Look at the early morning hours to see whether the London end slowed before the Leicester and Nottingham stretches did, and compare it with the Monday before.

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M1 on Mondays: Monday 19 October 2026

How traffic on the M1 has moved hour by hour, compared with the same day a week earlier (Monday 12 October 2026) and with National Highways’ usual speed for each hour. Updated every five minutes.

Speeds are colour-coded the same way as our live M1 speed flow map: 50 mph and over, 30 mph to 49 mph, under 30 mph. The colour shows the speed actually achieved; the usual speed is shown in bold beside it.

08:00 (8am)

Southbound · slowest hour against usual

average 54 mph across the road, against a usual 58 mph; the same hour last week 62 mph.

10:00 (10am)

Northbound · slowest hour against usual

average 60 mph across the road, against a usual 60 mph; the same hour last week 63 mph.

11:00 (11am)

Northbound · slowest stretch

J28–J29 6 mph, against a usual 49 mph.

22:00 (10pm)

Southbound · slowest stretch

J9–J10 7 mph, against a usual 65 mph.

Across the day

Northbound · stop-start

J28–J29 traffic below 15 mph somewhere on this stretch for about 465 minutes (7.75 hours), between 09:00 (9am) and 22:00 (10pm).

Northbound · against last week

slower than last Monday: average 61 mph over 21 hours, against 63 mph in the same hours.

Southbound · stop-start

J29–J29A traffic below 15 mph somewhere on this stretch for about 240 minutes (4 hours), between 07:00 (7am) and 00:00 (midnight).

Southbound · against last week

about the same as last Monday: average 61 mph over 20 hours, against 62 mph in the same hours.

Northbound: average speed by hour

Southbound: average speed by hour

Monday 19 October 2026Monday 12 October 2026usual speed (National Highways)

How we worked this out. We regularly take National Highways’ live speed data for each stretch of the M1 and keep the average for each hour. These figures cover 24 hours of Monday 19 October 2026 and 21 of Monday 12 October 2026 (hours with no readings are left out). Hours are UK time. A speed shown for the whole road is the average across its stretches, so a short queue may not move it much: the cards point to the slowest stretches.

© 2026 Corporate Ace Limited. The analysis, wording, charts and conclusions on this page are our own, produced from the live information we collect, including National Highways’ data. You may not copy, republish or reproduce them on any website, app, broadcast or publication without our prior written permission, which must set out how and where they will be used. To ask, please contact us. Powered by National Highways’ Transport Data Feeds.

The M1 on Other Days

For the road right now, see the live M1 speed flow map and the latest M1 traffic news, or look up any junction on the M1 junctions page.