How many motorways are there in the uk

However, at just m , the A M in Manchester appears to be pipping it to the post. How did we get here, and where are we going? A discussion reflecting on speed, automobiles and AI. It will come as no great surprise for anyone who finds themselves stuck in its daily queues that the busiest bit of motorway in the country is thought to be between junctions 13 and 14 of the M25 , near Heathrow.

This stretch of tarmac sees around , vehicles every day. This is because when the road was constructed, the plan was to add junction 3 when the link road to the A1 had been built. But this link road was cancelled, meaning there was simply no need for another exit. These days the site is occupied by motorway services instead, so all is not wasted. Views from a motorway have never been so good. The most northerly motorway in the United Kingdom is the M90 in Scotland, which runs from south of the Queensferry Crossing, across the Firth of Forth, past Dunfermline and Kinross, and all the way to the western suburbs of Perth.

However, the title for longest orbital road has been snatched by the mile Berlin Ring in Germany. When the first motorway service station opened, 60 years ago, it was the height of cool. We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services. You can change your cookie settings at any time.

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives. Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. This annual release presents estimates for road lengths in Great Britain maintained at public expense. These estimates are based on information from a range of sources, including Ordnance Survey and local authorities.

The majority of the data relate to the time point of April Detailed statistical tables can be accessed online via the road length statistical series. By length, most roads in Great Britain are managed locally by a local highway authority or Transport for London. In , there were , miles of road in Great Britain.

This was 2, more miles than a decade earlier in a 1. There were more miles of major road in Great Britain in than in , a 2. Scotland Road Lengths Statistics.

The capital is about an hour's drive away making commuting for work faster. Motorways can give people more choice about where they live, such as moving out of congested inner cities to less populated areas.

Warrington in Cheshire is in a rural area but it's close to the M62, M56 and M6. This makes several cities easy to reach by road — Manchester is about 50 minutes away by the M Delivering post and supplies would be far harder without a motorway network.

It's the backbone of the Royal Mail and the road haulage industry. This allows one summer to do the bulk earthworks and another summer to build the road. A hard winter in between can shorten this period considerably.

There will usually be environmental work before the bulk earthworks start. This includes relocating protected species and clearing trees.

Engineers may also need to allow an archaeological dig before construction starts. Other factors include whether there are any major structures on the route and any local access issues. These can mean working from one end rather than from several places along the route at the same time.

Some roads, such as the M5, are built in sections. If money is short the most urgently needed sections are built first. The impact of this kind of travel was huge… motorways have acted as great agents of decentralisation — allowing people to live anywhere, drive anywhere and work anywhere. Professor of planning and regeneration at University College London.

At miles km , the M6 is the UK's longest motorway. The M5 does not radiate from London at all and relieves the A38! In Scotland you can see quite clearly that motorways planned by the Scottish Office, rather than the Department of Transport replace the A road they relieve.

The M5 does not follow the A5 because the zones are different. The radial routes M1-M4 split the southern half of England into quarters.

All motorways west of the M5 are in the 5-zone, while M6 was used for Birmingham - Preston and its eventual extensions. M7, M8 and M9 were reserved for Scotland, but as pointed out, the M7 does not exist. Steven, Glasgow Scotland The M7 is in use. It's in Ireland. Peter Crawford, St.

Helier, Jersey James Yardley, Cambridge When I was training to become a driving instructor I was informed that the roads are numbered in such a manner that the A1 runs from capital city to capital city's river, this is known as zone 1, all roads that start to the east will start with a 1, zone 2 runs south from London to Brighton all roads to the east of this line start with a 2, hence the M2 and M25 fall in this zone , zone 3 runs west of London towards Bristol, bringing into play roads such as the A, Zone 4 is north from Bristol to Birmingham and east to the A1, zone 5 runs from Birmingham to Manchester, and zone 6 is from Manchester to Carlisle, zone's 7, 8 and 9 do cover Scotland in a fan style, with zone 7 covering west Scotland 8 central and 9 east Scotland, any motorway's are numbered by the zones that they start in, so with this information we know that the A 66 runs from west to east across the country, check this on any map and you will soon see for yourself!

Any more minor routes are numbered A1x, A1xx, A1xxx, B1xx or B1xxx A1xxx does not follow a sophisticated pattern, although the road must occur in zone 1. The M25 does not breach this system, as the oldest section occurs in Zone 2. Some roads overlap, for example the A The system is slightly different in Scotland.

All motorways must follow their adjacent A road i. M74 follows A74, M8 follows A8.