The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a major road encircling most of Greater London. The 117-mile (188-kilometre) motorway is one of the most important roads in the UK and one of the busiest. Margaret Thatcher opened the final section in 1986, making the M25 the longest ring road in Europe upon opening. The Dartford Crossing completes the orbital route but is not classed as motorway; it is classed as a trunk road and designated as the A282. In some cases, including notable legal contexts such as the Communications Act 2003, the M25 is used as a de facto alternative boundary for Greater London.
The A30 is a major road in England, running 284 miles (457 km) WSW from London to Land's End.
The M6 motorway is the longest motorway in the United Kingdom. It is located entirely within England, running for just over 230 miles (370 km) from the Midlands to the border with Scotland. It begins at Junction 19 of the M1 and the western end of the A14 at the Catthorpe Interchange, near Rugby before heading north-west. It passes Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle before terminating at Junction 45 near Gretna. Here, just short of the Scottish border it becomes the A74(M) which continues to Glasgow as the M74. Its busiest sections are between junctions 4 and 10a in the West Midlands, and junctions 16 to 19 in Cheshire; these sections have now been converted to smart motorways.
The A1, also known as the Great North Road, is the longest numbered road in the United Kingdom, at 410 miles (660 km). It connects London, the capital of England, with Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. The numbering system for A-roads, devised in the early 1920s, was based around patterns of roads radiating from two hubs at London and Edinburgh. The first number in the system, A1, was given to the most important part of that system: the road from London to Edinburgh, joining the two central points of the system and linking the UK's (then) two mainland capital cities. It passes through or near north London, Hatfield, Welwyn Garden City, Stevenage, Baldock, Letchworth Garden City, Biggleswade, Eaton Socon, Buckden, Peterborough, Stamford, Grantham, Newark-on-Trent, Retford, Doncaster, Pontefract, York, Wetherby, Ripon, Darlington, Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Morpeth, Alnwick and Berwick-upon-Tweed.
The M56 motorway serves the Cheshire and Greater Manchester areas of England. It runs east to west from junction 4 of the M60 at Gatley, south of Manchester, to Dunkirk, approximately four miles north of Chester. With a length of 33.3 miles (53.6 km), it connects North Wales and the Wirral peninsula with much of the rest of North West England, serves business and commuter traffic heading towards Manchester, particularly that from the wider Cheshire area, and provides the main road access to Manchester Airport from the national motorway network.
The A12 is a major road in Eastern England. It runs north-east/south-west between London and the coastal town of Lowestoft in the north-eastern corner of Suffolk, following a similar route to the Great Eastern Main Line until Ipswich. A section of the road between Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth became part of the A47 in 2017. Between the junctions with the M25 and the A14, the A12 forms part of the unsigned Euroroute E30. Unlike most A roads, this section of the A12, together with the A14 and the A55, has junction numbers as if it were a motorway.
The A27 is a major road in England. It runs from its junction with the A36 at Whiteparish in the county of Wiltshire, follows the south coast of Hampshire and West Sussex, and terminates at Pevensey in East Sussex.
A trunk road, trunk highway, or strategic road is a major road, usually connecting two or more cities, ports, airports and other places, which is the recommended route for long-distance and freight traffic. Many trunk roads have segregated lanes in a dual carriageway, or are of motorway standard.
The Department for Transport (DfT) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland that have not been devolved. The department is run by the Secretary of State for Transport, currently, Mark Harper.
M1 Pacific Motorway is a 127-kilometre motorway linking Sydney to Newcastle via the Central Coast and Hunter regions of New South Wales. Formerly known but still commonly referred to by both the public and the government as the F3 Freeway, Sydney–Newcastle Freeway, and Sydney–Newcastle Expressway, it is part of the AusLink road corridor between Sydney and Brisbane.
The Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) is a series of 15 volumes that provide standards, advice notes and other documents relating to the design, assessment and operation of trunk roads, including motorways in the United Kingdom, and, with some amendments, the Republic of Ireland. It also forms the basis of the road design standards used in many other countries.
The United Kingdom has a well developed and extensive network of roads totalling about 262,300 miles (422,100 km). Road distances are shown in miles or yards and UK speed limits are indicated in miles per hour (mph) or by the use of the national speed limit (NSL) symbol. Some vehicle categories have various lower maximum limits enforced by speed limiters. A unified numbering system is in place for Great Britain, whilst in Northern Ireland, there is no available explanation for the allocation of road numbers.
Transport Scotland is the national transport agency of Scotland. It was established by the Transport (Scotland) Act 2005, and began operating on 1 January 2006 as an executive agency of the Scottish Government.
Musgrave railway station was a railway station situated on the Eden Valley Railway and located between Penrith and Kirkby Stephen East, England.
Driver location signs are signs placed every 500 metres (550 yd) along each side of English motorways, and some other major English roads, to provide information that will allow motorists to know their precise location. As of July 2009, roads in England, but not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, have these signs. This information might be useful in the event of an emergency or breakdown. They were first introduced in 2003, and they complement distance marker posts. Both types of sign display a unique location number. The number, although given without units, is the distance in kilometres from a designated datum location for the road, although signs meant for driver navigation are in miles.
A smart motorway, also known in Scotland as an intelligent transport system, is a section of motorway in the United Kingdom that employs active traffic management (ATM) techniques to increase capacity through the use of MIDAS technology including variable speed limits and occasionally hard shoulder running and ramp metering at busy times. They were developed at the turn of the 21st century as a cost-effective alternative to traditional carriageway widening, with intended benefits ranging from more reliable journey times to lower vehicle emissions. However, despite the risk of a collision occurring between two moving vehicles being found to be decreased, there has been an acknowledged rise in the incidence of collisions involving vehicles where at least one was stationary in the first few years following the widespread removal of the hard shoulder on the country's busiest sections of motorway. Smart motorways garnered intense criticism from politicians, police representatives and motoring organisations, particularly from 2020 onwards, after a surge in near miss incidents and dozens of fatalities were revealed, and as of April 2023, no new smart motorways will be built.
Cycling in the United Kingdom has a long history, since the earliest days of the bicycle, and after a decline in the mid-20th century has been undergoing a resurgence in recent decades.
The South Wales Trunk Road Agent is one of the two trunk road agents in Wales. It is responsible for managing motorways and trunk roads in South Wales on behalf of the Welsh Government. Established on 1 April 2006 as the South Wales Trunk Road Agency, and renamed to its current name on 1 April 2012. The agent manages the motorways and trunk roads in the fourteen principal areas of the south of Wales, from the Severn Bridge in the east to Milford Haven in the west. The remainder of Wales is managed by the North and Mid Wales Trunk Road Agent.
The Major Road Network (MRN) is a classification of local authority roads in England. It incorporates the National Highways-controlled Strategic Road Network (SRN) and the more major local authority controlled A roads. This network accounts for around 4 per cent of the nation's road length but 43 per cent of the traffic flows. It is designed to allow central government funding to be more effectively targeted towards the more economically critical road infrastructure. The system was proposed by the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund in October 2017 and adopted by the government in its 2017 Transport Investment Strategy. The MRN scheme was implemented in late 2018 and local authorities were required to submit proposals for £3.5 billion of funding for new schemes to be constructed 2020-25.
The Historical Railways Estate (HRE) is a forms of over 3,100 structures—predominantly bridges, viaducts, tunnels and other works—associated with former railways in the United Kingdom. The structures are owned by the Department for Transport (DfT) and managed by National Highways (NH). NH has been criticised for its historical infill work on several bridges.
