THE saga of the M4 relief road rivals has rivalled any soap opera for longevity.

First mooted in 1991, it’s been killed off and resurrected more times than Godzilla.

But now, finally, it looks like the end is in sight. But whether or not it’s a happy ending remains to be seen.

Carwyn Jones has said he will make a decision on whether or not to give the scheme – currently estimated to cost about £1.5 billion, with the final price tag likely to be higher – the green light before he quits as a first minister.

And that's only seven weeks away, meaning a decision must be coming fairly imminently.

So it’s a little worrying to hear him say last week he still hadn’t seen the report of the public inquiry into the scheme – he’ll have to make a decision very quickly indeed.

And, as likely his final major decision as first minister, it may be the act by which his premiership is judged in years to come.

But it may already be a done deal, with the mood around the Senedd that it's dead in the water.

It seems the massive price tag, the environmental damage, the extensive works at Newport Docks – including that colossal new bridge they’ve said they’ll have to build – and the several years of disruption as building work takes place may just be too much to justify the scheme.

Good news for environmental campaigners and those who think the money would be better spent elsewhere, but less so for those who can count the amount of time they’ve spent on the M4 going about 20mph in days.

A lot of people much smarter than me have said traffic on the motorway is likely to increase significantly once the tolls are scrapped just before Christmas, and anyone who uses the road on a regular basis knows this is a recipe for disaster.

Perhaps there’s work to be done to convince drivers to avoid the motorway.

A perennial problem with the stretch of the M4 around Newport is that it’s used by many as a commuter belt.

A lot of people – I'm guilty of it myself sometimes – often get on at Coldra or Malpas and then off again at junction 28, or vice versa.

Clearly this isn’t how a motorway is supposed to be used, but what’s the alternative? Do we really want hundreds, even thousands, of cars driving through the overly-complicated road system in the centre of Newport every morning and evening?

Maybe the blue route – beefing up the SDR and Steelworks Road – is the answer after all. But would people use it?

Habit is a strong thing, and is someone who's been driving from up and down the M4 from their home in Malpas to their work in Duffryn every day for the past 20 years going to go a different way just because the government says they should?

Others have said we're all going to be in driverless cars in 20 years time, which will solve traffic problems as they can essentially be driven bumper-to-bumper without the risk of a crash due to driver error.

In reality it's hard to see this becoming the norm for far longer than that, and believing otherwise is putting far too much faith in how willing people will be to place their lives in the hands of computers.

Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe in a few weeks Carwyn Jones will finally fire the starting pistol on the black route. But everything I've heard recently makes me believe this isn't likely.

And that condemns Newport and south Wales as a whole to years, even decades, more of traffic jams.

- At the other end of the M4, Theresa May has managed a quite spectacular feat in alienating Brexiteers and Remainers in equal measure.

Surely even the most hardened of Brexiteers must be holding their heads in their hands at just how much the PM has managed to foul up negotiations with Europe - with less than six months to go until we leave. Voting to leave the EU and voting to cut the UK completely adrift from the continent are very different things.

And the 48 per cent who voted to stay in were promised we'd be leaving in as good a state - maybe even better - than we were as a member.

But in just a few short months a no-deal Brexit has gone from a very distant worst-case scenario to a very real possibility.

Some have said the government could be on the verge of collapse, with murmurings that the DUP is ready to scrap its power-sharing deal with the Conservatives.

And cancelling all of Parliamentary business on Monday after Mrs May's update on the negotiations is hardly a good sign.

Hardly a week has gone by over the past few months without someone predicting another snap General Election is imminent.

This time it could really be true.

Batten down the hatches.