Should insomnia strike, this may do the trick. Road numbers! Have you ever wondered why Britain’s roads have the numbers they do? No? Oh, it’s just me then. And, possibly sadly, I find it fascinating!
A scheme for classifying and numbering Britain’s roads commenced in 1913, was delayed for a certain reason, and eventually published in 1923. There was a major revision in the ‘30s but this did not, in general, interfere with the basic method for allocating numbers.
The country was divided up into zones, six radiating out, like the spokes of a wheel, from London and three from Edinburgh. Each zone is defined on its anticlockwise side by its primary route. The A1 runs between London and Edinburgh and therefore all roads to its east are numbered in the ‘1’ series. Similarly the A2 originates in London, destination Dover, and so everything to the south and west is numbered in the ‘2’ series until the A3, London to Portsmouth road, is reached. Then everything changes to a ‘3’. You get the drift! Drifted off, maybe. To complete the set, and thus showing the entire country in nine zones, are:
A4 – London to Avonmouth
A5 – London to Holyhead
A6 – London to Carlisle
A7 – Edinburgh to Carlisle
A8 – Edinburgh to Greenock
A9 – Edinburgh to Inverness, and subsequently, John o’Groats
These single-digit A roads are supported by two-digit A roads which, in many cases, provide additional spokes. The A10, A11, A12 and A13 are major routes to King’s Lynn, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Shoeburyness, respectively. The A14 to A19 routes do not emanate from London but are to be found progressively further north. These two-digit roads are themselves supported by three-digit A roads, which also go places. They are generally shorter and less important but are numbered with similar logic – the higher the number the further from London. If you wish to know where the A104 is you need to look no further than northeast London. On the other hand it’s no good looking for the A192 in London, because it’s way up in the real northeast, as would be expected. Why-aye, Geordie land. The gaps are filled by four-digit A roads and B roads.
One, deliberate, exception to this system is North Kent. The roads in and around Grain, Sheppey and Thanet should all be numbered in the ‘1’ series as they are to the north of the A2. But it was decided that the Thames Estuary would form the boundary. A glimpse into what it might have been like is to be found on the Isle of Anglesey. South of the A5 all roads are 4s and to the north, 5s. Notwithstanding the abomination that is the A55!
Another rule was made in that road numbers could extend outside of their zone, but only in a clockwise direction. 3s can enter 4 territory but not into 2. This makes sense in that it avoids arbitrary number changes at the zone border and allows a single road number to connect appropriately important destinations. It also allows for some extraordinarily long roads.
Test. What is the longest…?
a) road in the UK
b) two-digit A road
c) three-digit A road
d) B road
Sorry, you have drifted off and couldn’t give a monkey’s.
Every system has to cope with change. In this case, new roads are built, or simply cobbled together; some are reclassified or declassified, and so on. In that latter case, they become known as unclassified roads and given a C, D or U number. Which means that they’re all classified. A nice oxymoron there.
Another question: using the above logic, where will you find the A303? Southwest London, of course. That’s where it ought to be, and where it used to be. It ran between Vauxhall and Wandsworth. But that road was reclassified into a four-digit A road and the spare A303 was snapped up in 1933 as a name for a mélange of disparate roads and tracks that were heading in a vaguely southwesterly direction, even though such usage breaks the system. And it is this road that has been partially upgraded to become the main arterial route to the southwest. It has not been renumbered A30, as it should. The A30 continues, as it always has, to wend its weary way through Salisbury, Shaftesbury and Yeovil, sounding grand and important, but actually serving no other purpose than for local traffic. An example of breaking the anticlockwise rule is the A66. It used to start, correctly enough, at Penrith and headed east across the Pennines. But someone decided that it ought to be a true coast-to-coast road. Now starting at Workington it should have had a ‘5’ series number. And an important one at that. But the A59 runs from Liverpool to York and there aren’t any more. So the choice was to break the rule and extend the A66 backwards, or give it an unassuming, anonymous, three or four-digit number. They chose the former.
The biggest change to Britain’s roads was the overlaying of the motorway network from the late ‘50s onward. In Scotland, which had until recently its own separate network, the M roads are numbered strictly logically, based on the A road that they either replace or augment. A74/M74, A8/M8, A9/M9 etc. Even A876/M876. Not very sexy, snappy and suave, but logical. In England and Wales the numbering is utterly shambolic!
It all starts vaguely promising. The M1 heads north from London. The M2 sounds grand and impressive and heads off in the direction of Dover but peters out a long way short, not even managing to get to Canterbury. Actually, it refuses to have any connection with London, with any other motorway, and remains utterly aloof. Shamed by its own inadequacy, it is fundamentally a North Kent by-pass, leaving the M20 to bear its burden. The M3 doesn’t follow the A3 but the A30, until it loses its binding and droops limply towards Southampton. The M4 does parallel the A4 but presses on into Wales leaving the A4 far behind. The M5… err well, where the heck is the M5? Oh, it’s over there – Birmingham to Exeter. Shouldn’t that be the M38? The M69 runs between Carlisle and Newcastle, does it not? Nope! It goes to Leicester from Coventry, shadowing the A46. There are lots – The M32, M50, M54, M606…
Notwithstanding the Preston bypass, Britain’s first piece of motorway and now part of the M6, the first proper motorway was what we call the M1. If you are going to create a series of anything, there is an overriding urge to number the first one, well, 1. That’s what they did. But actually this is the logical M5, along with the section of M6 through Birmingham and onto the M54 towards Shrewsbury. The true M1 has been struggling for nascence for decades, following the A1 in fits and starts, with an erratic, or just absent, junction numbering scheme, and clumsily known as the A1(M). Just this year, the orphaned section leading to Newcastle-upon-Tyne has finally been attached to the rest of the network, with the completion of Leeming Bar to Barton section. Does the M’way network have its own numbering scheme, or not? I’m baffled! Technically, it does, but it lacks the elegance and beauty of the general road scheme and so planners seem happy to ignore it and do whatever they fancy.
Another interesting read (really) is about the motorways that never were. I have often been puzzled and impressed, in equal measure, by the grandiosity of J10 on the M4. It’s a full split-grade junction connecting the M4 with a pathetic stump of motorway, known as the A329(M). But wait! This was to be the M31 connecting Reading to the M25 via Bracknell.
What about the M67? The motorway that was to connect Manchester to Sheffield. The railway buffs here will immediately perk up and think Woodhead! Ah yes! Woodhead. The trans-pennine railway line, completely rebuilt by BR in the 1950’s, complete with overhead electrification and brand new tunnel, inexplicably closed by BR in 1980. Why? The M67 was to be laid along its route. But that never happened because it was a stupid idea and the railway never reinstated. What a waste!
Also worth mentioning, is the M8 through Glasgow. It’s insane. There’s a junction at every six feet. Slip roads leave and join on both sides of each carriageway. It smashes its way through the heart of the city. The number of lanes constantly varies. Fortunately there is usually so much traffic that, traveling at walking pace, there is plenty of time to read the road signs. Unfortunately, if you’re in the wrong lane, there is no chance of correcting that. And never look a Wegie in the eye. You looking at me, Jimmy? It’s terrible, when working on audience contact, to have Evelyn and Mabel in the front row at the KH. Sorry, a digression. Bizarrely, this is the folly of trying to do a job properly. City planners went to the States and were impressed by the urban freeways they saw, and wanted to create a similarly impressive structure for Glasgow. The city centre was to have a complete inner ring road, with the east and south sides being for the majority of through traffic, and the north and west sides just for city centre traffic. There were to be radial motorways to Hamilton, Ayr, Cumbernauld, Maryhill and Lomond along with a complete northern bypass motorway. Well, it got started. Tenements and other inconveniently located buildings were flattened in preparation. The ‘quiet’ north and west sides of the inner ring road were built. But then democracy kicked in and that’s where it all ended. The slip roads for the Maryhill motorway are extant but lead into bushes. That the south side was fully intended is attested to by the ‘ski-jump’ – slip roads that end in mid-air! There are bridges to nowhere. The land for a grandiose east-end junction can be seen by where the houses are – and aren’t. You see, as wonderful as it would have been for Strathclyde traffic, people didn’t want their city being smashed up, flattened, destroyed and disfigured. They protested and put a stop to it. And so, Glasgow is lumbered with the most ridiculous motorway in Britain, taking millions of vehicles per day to places they neither need nor desire to be. Or do you know of better? Do tell!
But sorry, you’re asleep now. Nighty night. Sweet dreams.
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