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roads.org.uk
Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
@roads.org.uk
We write about UK road infrastructure and history! Join us for updates and other stuff from the UK's favourite roads website, www.roads.org.uk
Pinned
Today I'm launching a silly roads-related side project - the Simulator, that will let you take journeys around the UK's major roads from the comfort of your chair. And to explain why I have invested so much effort in something so pointless, I wrote this. open.substack.com/pub/roadsorg...
Hello, here's my ridiculous side project
An introduction to what I write, and why I write it, and where my strange new road sign simulator fits in to all this.
open.substack.com
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
As a reminder, this is happening at 7.30pm this evening for anyone who is interested in the Maps section of our Society.
Want to learn more about SABRE Maps? Not sure which #maps we have available or how to find them? Or what other mapping functions we have? Perhaps you just like maps, history or the railways? Join us for our first-ever Zoom session, Wed 14 Jan 2026 - free at 1930 UK/Ireland time. buff.ly/JxwTeg1
January 14, 2026 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
I can't find it because Google's a mess, but somebody once wrote that our website is "old fashioned", in a way "the web needs more of"

As more and more websites feel broken, stick two fingers up at AI summaries, video, data tracking and trolling by reading a massive page about a service station
History Pages - motorway services
motorwayservices.uk
January 14, 2026 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
A chance purchase & a rather fine "find". An original 1968 architectural perspective by Frank Weemys, no less, of the new Holford design for London Bridge, reconstructed in 1967/73. Only ever seen this in b/w before. #architecture @roads.org.uk @c20society.bsky.social

flic.kr/p/2rRsQs2
January 12, 2026 at 4:43 PM
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Well there's a lovely thing, my blog hit 1.5m visits this week. Hoping to write a bit more this year.

therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com
The Ranty Highwayman
The adventures in time & space of a Chartered Civil Engineer, specialising in designing for walking and cycling.
therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com
January 9, 2026 at 11:22 AM
Just launched, something brilliantly pointless and surprisingly addictive: the Simulator will let you take virtual journeys around the UK's road network with realistic road signs and without the traffic. All you need is your web browser. Why not take a spin? sim.roads.org.uk
January 8, 2026 at 6:41 PM
Glad to be confounding your expectations, one by one.
January 7, 2026 at 6:12 PM
Today I'm launching a silly roads-related side project - the Simulator, that will let you take journeys around the UK's major roads from the comfort of your chair. And to explain why I have invested so much effort in something so pointless, I wrote this. open.substack.com/pub/roadsorg...
Hello, here's my ridiculous side project
An introduction to what I write, and why I write it, and where my strange new road sign simulator fits in to all this.
open.substack.com
January 7, 2026 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
A spendid architects sketch of the M6 at the Lune Gorge by Frank Weemys in 1967 used, with the MOT's consent, on the front cover of the Guide to Appleby & N. Westmorland Councils. The heavily engineered section opened in 1970. @roads.org.uk @sabre-roads.org.uk @showmeasign.online

flic.kr/p/2rQHmUG
January 7, 2026 at 2:19 PM
Even artist’s impressions of GLC road projects were drawn with the GLC’s custom designed street lights, like this view of the unbuilt West Cross Route!
Another of J.D.M. Harvey’s drawings of an unbuilt section of the West Cross Route, this time passing Olympia. It was produced as part of Husband & Co’s consulting engineer’s report to the Greater London Council in May 1970.
January 2, 2026 at 10:09 PM
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
Why nobody knows what colour this road sign is
Nobody knows what colour this road sign is
If you think this sign should be green, you're wrong.
motorwayservices.uk
December 28, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
The London County Council’s Strand Underpass, opened in 1964 and created through the conversion of part of the former Kingsway tram tunnel. The work, undertaken by John Mowlem & Co., cost just over £1 million. Here is an LCC brochure marking its completion.
December 27, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
The opening ceremony brochure for Westway and the West Cross Route from July 1970. “Guests will be invited to […] proceed with a police escort to Westway where the Minister will be invited by the Leader of the Council to cut a ribbon on the westbound carriageway and to declare the new roadways open”
December 26, 2025 at 10:14 AM
How do you fix the M4 into London? The Ministry of Transport thought you couldn't. But a team of engineers had other ideas, and wanted to extend it as a right-hand-drive elevated road across London to Barking. ("Barking" was the operative word in their plan.) www.roads.org.uk/ringways/wes...
M4 and A4
Serving Reading, Bristol and South Wales, the A4 and M4 are one of London's most important approaches. But the wildest fantasies of the sixties couldn't overcome its trickier problems.
www.roads.org.uk
December 24, 2025 at 6:58 PM
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The UK pioneered changeable road signs of all types - we gave the world the matrix signal, but we also had a go at all sorts of other novel ideas. Take a tour of some of the wildest ideas of the 60s, part of our Mixed Signals long read. www.roads.org.uk/articles/mix...
New signs for new ideas
While the headlines were still full of fog worries, and the Ministry of Transport was mainly preoccupied with emergency warning signs on motorways, local authorities were tasked with keeping the…
www.roads.org.uk
December 23, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
For this week's #MapMonday, you can discover the OS London Two Inch Ministry of Transport maps from 1922, and see just where the A1, A2, A3 etc all meet at "point zero" in London. Or not...

buff.ly/BAr8iFr
December 22, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Fancy a stroll on a motorway? Before the M621 opened to connect Leeds with the motorway network you could do just that. #leeds www.roads.org.uk/blog/walk-m621
A walk on the M621
Fancy a stroll? In 1972, the City of Leeds was about to open its new South East Urban Motorway and proudly showed off the achievement with a "walkabout" event.
www.roads.org.uk
December 22, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Last week I added a new video to my YouTube channel featuring the strange and brilliant Studland Motor Road. There's a whole article about it on the website too, complete with a photo gallery to provide some summery seaside sunshine to your dark December day. www.roads.org.uk/articles/stu...
December 21, 2025 at 2:38 PM
One of London's unbuilt urban motorways was so unpopular that government officials decided to keep its plans a secret and pretend that they had never planned it at all. Their plan to drive a motorway through Barnes was the worst kept secret in West London. #barnes www.roads.org.uk/ringways/rin...
Ringway 2 Western Section
A critically important link in London's proposed urban motorway network - but fierce opposition from the locals made the authorities scared to ever reveal its route.
www.roads.org.uk
December 20, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Yesterday we took the deepest dive into the untold history of an unremarked piece of street furniture, and how detail is everything if you want to forge a city's identity. roadsorguk.substack.com/p/london-in-...
December 19, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Just published - we're slowly losing something we didn't know we had: a street light designed just for London. I've taken a deep (and deeply geeky) dive into the history of an everyday object that was designed not to be noticed. #london roadsorguk.substack.com/p/london-in-...
December 18, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Just published: a drive through of the Studland Motor Road, a little road in Dorset that's the legal ancestor of the motorway network. Join us for a drive through the dunes! #dorset www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPr...
- YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
www.youtube.com
December 17, 2025 at 6:58 PM
The government is still figuring out how to pay for new infrastructure, but back in January one thing was already becoming clear - the five year cycles of Road Investment Periods weren't delivering any of their promises. www.roads.org.uk/blog/all-cha...
All change
In July 2024, a new Government entered office with a very different set of priorities. What does it mean for a faltering roads programme?
www.roads.org.uk
December 16, 2025 at 5:47 PM
The UK's highest numbered motorway is too narrow to have hard shoulders, too short to fit in a lay-by and has a junction named for a toll plaza that doesn't exist. The oddball M898 is full of surprises. #glasgow www.roads.org.uk/motorway/m898
M898
The highest-numbered motorway in the UK is a tiny spur that connects the Erskine Bridge to the motorway network west of Glasgow.
www.roads.org.uk
December 15, 2025 at 5:08 PM