The M42 motorway runs north east from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire to just south-west of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, passing Redditch, Solihull, the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) and Tamworth on the way, serving the east of the Birmingham metropolitan area.

[1] The curve around the south-eastern side of Solihull opened in September 1985 followed by the section from the M6 with the A5 at Tamworth in December 1985.

[citation needed] The southern section of the motorway to Alvechurch just north of Redditch to form a junction with the A441 and from A5 at Tamworth with the A444 at Measham opened in 1986.

Junction 3a was remodelled to give priority to traffic operating between the now westbound section of the M42 and the extended M40 motorway, which opened in stages between December 1989 and January 1991.

Active Traffic Management with hard shoulder running and variable speed limits were introduced in 2006.

Since the 1990s, there have been constant plans to build a new service station on the motorway south of Birmingham Airport and the NEC, but this has yet to be built.

This system allows operators to open and close any lane to traffic in order to help manage congestion or an incident.

[11][12] Data from driver location signs are used to provide distance and carriageway identifier information.