motorways

Motorways are segregated roads devoted to trunk motor traffic. The first true motorway was the Preston bypass of 1958, precursor to the opening of the first part of the M1 in 1959. The network grew slowly: by April 1963, only 194 miles were open, reaching 957 by 1973, 1, 731 in 1984, and 1, 969 in 1994.

Motorways cut journey times, halving the coach journey from Birmingham to London in 1960, and reduced fatal accidents to less than half the level of ordinary roads. They spread the commuting zone, especially around London, and shifted industrial location to such as the ‘M4 corridor’, and in the cities divided communities in ways unknown since the railway. In the 1990s, toll- and traffic-charged private finance has been employed to escape the constraints of ‘public expenditure’, a return to the project of 1938.