Talk:Roads in the United Kingdom

UK Department for Transport estimates the UK road network to be 246,700 miles long
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/801357/road-lengths-in-great-britain-2018.pdf

small note regarding other limits?
Have had a browse thru a road traffic police manual... there's a few other interesting limits that may explain various things (including the common lack of minimum limits on e.g. motorways, despite the sign existing in the highway code), i can't see any other place it would be appropriate to put them (clicking on links about uk limits send you round in big circles with this being the reference for NSL)... would have put them straight in but wondering if it might just get shot down.

EG 40mph on motorways for dual-trailer vehicles, 20mph *everywhere* else (I think I've only seen one of these, as part of a funfair convoy making painfully slow progress up the M6)

18mph for tractors... which i suppose the police ignore even more than the 40mph single carriageway truck limit

and several others which I can't recall, but i did grab a phone camera pic...

...plus 52.8mph (85km/h) for rigid-bodied vehicles over 12 tonnes... so not artics but cranes, etc. OK so it's a EU limit, and I saw it seperately from the police manual, but it's apparently also law in the UK, unlike the common 90km/h (55.9mph) limiter on HGVs - ours can be anything up to 60mph strangely. 82.46.180.56 (talk) 23:14, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi. This might be more appropriate in Driving in the United Kingdom which is on my list to rewrite.  Do you have a reference beyond the manual? Regan123 (talk) 18:43, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sure I've looked them up somewhere else, but... it's been years now, obviously. I'd have to go back to first principles and look it up again. Still, shouldn't that count as a perfectly good citeable source, what with it being the primary reference manual for actual enforcement of the law? 193.63.174.211 (talk) 14:42, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Minimum speed limits are in place for the Blackwall Tunnel. I would suspect they are used at some other 'choke points' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.201.98.210 (talk) 10:22, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Northern Ireland
I am very concerned that at the moment there is very little here about Northern Ireland. Does anyone have some good references to expand it. I can do some work on the motorways from the motorway archive, but beyond that I am a bit stumped. Regan123 (talk) 18:43, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Driving
I think the table, now that it has the kph conversions looks cluttered and messy, with unneccesary duplication. It was the initial intention when I put it in that the conversions be put underneath to avoid this. It is an article about UK roads after all - where we use mph - and whilst I agree that providing a conversion to kph is useful, this should not at the expense of aesthetics. --TFoxton (talk) 20:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Pity the UK Government did not complete full metrification (Canada & Australia - were able to achieve it - and Australia still drives on the left) to avoid this problem. pebbens (talk) 00:27, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Speed Limit Signs
A perculiarity of the British roads is that there is a National Speed Limit applies sign (known universially as a "restriction ends" sign - so could be interpreted as no restriction to speed...) and some assume it means 70mph by default... Interestingly some local authorities post "60" speed limit signs around cameras, I ponder how many would break the law past the camera if they were not so kind... pebbens (talk) 00:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Primary destinations
"Primary destinations" is a redirect here from many infoboxes, and it arrives at a vague "important places" and a citation needed. Could I suggest that a good definition is "those destinations that are given in orange letters on a green background" (as opposed to "those destinations that are given in black letters on a white background")? The Dept of the Environment (or whatever they are called nowadays) must have some rules and a formal list. (We would need the official list because my local council has incorrectly put some local destinations on the A4146 in orange on green - I suppose because they couldn't be bothered to use the regulation white box on the green sign method!). Does anybody know where to find this list? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Roads in Northern Ireland
I redirected Roads in Northern Ireland to this article. As the UK article addresses technical aspects pertaining to roads in Northern Ireland such as primary destinations, taxation, road signs etc, it seemed a logical destination for the redirect. Alastairward (talk) 00:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

This article really needs a proper explanation on why some highways were adopted and others were not?
Prior to the advent of the petrol-driven vehicle, there seems to have been a plethora of routes that could have been taken to get directly from A to B within the UK. The excellent website is a perfect source for looking at the original byways that were recorded on the first series of Ordnance Survey maps in the mid 19th century. But what piques my interest is why so many routes that were straight and true thoroughfares are now leafy overgrown bridleways or gaps in a hedgerow? I would have thought the pre-existing direct route with the least number of corners or detours would have been the logical option for adoption.

Currently this article does not explain why the governmental agencies responsible for adopting and upgrading the road network of the UK in the 1880s-1920s sometimes either ignored byways, used only certain stretches of route or instead completely bypassed whole sections. Evidence seems to suggest, looking at old maps, there are numerous byways that were never incorporated into the national network although they often presented the most obvious and straight route between two places.

As an example take Tenby, west Wales. On the 1856 Ordnance Survey Map, the main road into the town from New Hedges is straight whereas the modern road forks right before taking a much more circuitous westerly route into the town. . Or another good example, is at Beeston Castle in Cheshire, in 1856 there is a road circling the entire site, however by the present day only 75% is encircled, the remainder involves a ⅔-mile deotur.

There will be many more examples of these decisions. What I want to know is why? When government was forced to act when motor vehicles started to appear on the road what was the criteria for upgrading roads. Did they use Edwardian compulsory purchase orders or did landowners just let them tarmac roads? This question needs to be answered because those decisions have lain the foundation of why the modern road system in the UK looks largely the way it is. 109.150.225.207 (talk) 20:31, 30 August 2011 (UTC)T. Jones, Telford

Orphaned references in Roads in the United Kingdom
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Roads in the United Kingdom's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "hceac": From Vehicle Excise Duty:  From Road Fund:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 12:07, 18 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorted, thanks. PeterEastern (talk) 21:55, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 13 one external links on Roads in the United Kingdom. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081223010559/http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/qanda/writtenans/001215.htm to http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/qanda/writtenans/001215.htm
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20080705091844/http://www.iraptranstats.net/gb to http://www.iraptranstats.net/gb#IDARAD2G
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 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20110726043347/http://www.eurorap.org/library/pdfs/20080627_GB_Improved.pdf to http://www.eurorap.org/library/pdfs/20080627_GB_Improved.pdf
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 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20071229070048/http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/environment/historichighways/eastlancs/index.asp to http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/environment/historichighways/eastlancs/index.asp
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070928120836/http://www.cbuchanan.co.uk/about/about.asp?abId=2&part=1 to http://www.cbuchanan.co.uk/about/about.asp?abId=2&part=1
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20061009151759/http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringways/postwarandbeyond.shtml to http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringways/postwarandbeyond.shtml
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20080216104935/http://www.roadblock.org.uk/resources/roadsvictories.pdf to http://www.roadblock.org.uk/resources/roadsvictories.pdf
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20071107130536/http://archive.treasury.gov.uk/pub/text/budget95/ogd8.txt to http://archive.treasury.gov.uk/pub/text/budget95/ogd8.txt
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20071226194112/http://www.highways.gov.uk:80/knowledge/10567.aspx to http://www.highways.gov.uk/knowledge/10567.aspx
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20080705091844/http://www.iraptranstats.net/gb to http://www.iraptranstats.net/gb
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120210151331/http://www.eurorap.org/gb2008 to http://www.eurorap.org/gb2008

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Solar Roads - Land Area of Roads?
The land area used by roads (and possibly of roadside verges) should be stated. As it is now feasible to pave roads in photo-voltaic panels. So the question is of great interest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.23.59 (talk) 12:38, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

The definition of national speed limit
just to clarify why I made this edit... In the UK the "national speed limit" is the maximum speed allowed where no speed limit is specified. This is the case both inside and outside of built-up areas equally. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:06, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Road traffic safety
This section begins with 3 Histogram charts which compare data for the UK with that for 3/4 other countries with no reason why these are the others selected. All have much lower populations that the UK. It looks to me as through they could be selected to make a point. There's no associated discussion in the text below. In addition to updating, there needs to be a greater number of comparable countries.--FDent (talk) 16:44, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe our roads are some of the safest in the world. That being said, I don't there needs to be any more than a very general comparison with other countries here. I think the graphs should be removed. The following pages already offer safety comparisons:


 * List of countries by traffic-related death rate
 * Epidemiology of motor vehicle collisions
 * Road traffic safety
 * I don't there needs to be any in-depth comparisons here. NemesisAT (talk) 16:59, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that they could be simply removed. There's an over-emphasis on speed limit discussion on this page. It would be more meaningful to compare the UK safety stats for roads other modes of transport.--FDent (talk) 18:33, 13 April 2021 (UTC)