60-608: The A642 is an A-road in West Yorkshire , England which runs from Huddersfield to the A64 near Leeds . It partly follows the route of a historic turnpike road , which is evidenced by surviving toll houses . The road begins at Waterloo 2 miles (3 km) east of the town centre at the junction with A629 and continues via Lepton to Grange Moor where the A637 branches off. From there it passes through Middlestown and Horbury (on
120-548: A Royal Commission on London Traffic was established and proposed two major "avenues": east–west between Bayswater and Whitechapel via the City, and a north–south route between Holloway and Elephant and Castle . Jeffreys took a different view, preferring ring roads, and in 1905, more than 80 years before completion of the M25 motorway , proposed a "boulevard round London": As many cyclists also became motorists, Jeffreys's allegiances and
180-633: A 5 June dinner of the American Road Builders Association , and being described in Senate discussions about taxation and centralised funding of road construction as "a man who has done more than anyone else to build up the system that now exists in England." As the Road Board needed to work out which roads should be funded, upgraded or replaced, in 1913 Jeffreys appointed Henry Maybury , one of
240-399: A British organisation similar to Germany's Gesellschaft Reichsautobahnen ( Reichsautobahn Association). The journal titled his letter 'Roads of empire. Wanted – a British "Todt" organisation '. In 1944 he wrote a letter to The Times advocating the establishment of 'Roadside Parks' (now called 'roadside rests'). He said "Roadside Parks should be situated on the outskirts of towns and in
300-476: A charity that Jeffreys had founded in 1950. Several of Jeffreys's ideas were implemented after his death, including motorways ("special roads restricted to motor traffic alone with no stopping permitted and no pipes or cables laid beneath them"), the Severn Bridge between England and Wales (1966), and the orbital London by-pass (the M25 motorway , completed in 1986). His estate provided an endowment enabling
360-463: A civil service inquiry found the board was badly administered and had insufficient technical expertise. Wartime restrictions from 1914 were also a critical factor. Jeffreys recalled that, of the £23.5 million collected from motorists only £14.5 million was spent on roads of which 83% was on road surfacing. In 1912 Jeffreys travelled to the US to study its approach to highway development, attending
420-644: A four-car convoy for a 618-mile drive from Jinja to Rejaf to connect with a steamer on the River Nile . In 1933, he visited Australia and was recorded as the chairman of the RIA in a report of a Victoria League lunch in Sydney . In 1934, he visited Germany and, with officials from the Ministry of Transport and Fritz Todt , inspected highways from the airship Graf Zeppelin during the 1934 International Road Congress. Back in
480-614: A group of horticultural experts who would provide free advice to councils on the planting alongside trunk roads, by-passes and road-widening schemes. In the late 1920s, Jeffreys—described as "the recently retired chairman of the London-based Roads Improvement Association"—visited Africa, spending 14 weeks on the continent, driving 3,000 miles in South Africa. He then sailed from Durban to Mombasa and travelled by train, river steamer, and hire-car before joining
540-477: A method of navigation. There are two sub-schemes in use: one for motorways , and another for non-motorway roads. While some of Great Britain's major roads form part of the international E-road network , no E-routes are signposted in the United Kingdom. Due to changes in local road designation, in some cases roads are numbered out of zone. There are also instances where two unrelated roads have been given exactly
600-500: A national highway authority and state funding of highways. In 1903, he was the first witness to give evidence to a British government inquiry into highway administration, and provided extensive RIA technical information on road surfaces sourced from cyclists, saying "The bicycle is perhaps the best road inspector there is." He told the CTC Gazette : "To no class in the community are good roads so important as to cyclists." Also in 1903,
660-563: Is "not advised". Exceptions to this are known in the forms of numbers on signs and past use of prefixes H and V on signs in Milton Keynes where main roads have a regular grid system . These designations are used when planning officers deal with certain planning applications , including the creation of a new vehicular access onto a highway. The letter Q is used for many important unclassified roads in Fife . In London, Cycleways are using
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#1732851801522720-422: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Great Britain road numbering scheme In Great Britain , there is a numbering scheme used to classify and identify all roads. Each road is given a single letter (representing a category) and a subsequent number (between one and four digits). Though this scheme was introduced merely to simplify funding allocations, it soon became used on maps and as
780-541: Is based on a radial pattern centred on London . In Scotland the same scheme is centred on Edinburgh . In both cases the main single-digit roads normally define the zone boundaries. The exception is between Zones 1 and 2, where the River Thames defines the boundary so that all of Kent is in Zone 2. The first digit in the number of any road should be the number of the furthest-anticlockwise zone entered by that road. For example,
840-510: Is buried in Wivelsfield's churchyard. He had been an art collector and after his death, 158 works—bronzes, lithographs, drawings and paintings (including works by Boudin , Corot , Degas , Augustus John , Matisse , Picasso and Sickert , some of which he purchased from the artists themselves)—were auctioned at Christie's . Some were bought by the Tate Gallery with the money going towards
900-495: Is denoted by the colour of the sign border and direction arrow, and can be summarised as follows: Roads and lanes with yet lower traffic densities are designated as unclassified roads commonly using C , D and U prefixes but, while these are numbered, in general this is done for use by the local authorities who are responsible for maintaining them and the non-unique numbering is in a local series which usually does not appear on road signs; use of local numbers on signs in England
960-1055: Is joined by B6433 in Lepton and B6118 in Grange Moor, crosses B6117 in Horbury Bridge, A639 in Oulton, B6475 in Lupset, and A61 in Wakefield City Centre. Branches of B6128 join west and east of Horbury. East of Horbury it passes under the M1 motorway without a junction. The new Wakefield Eastern Relief Road , opened in 2017, connects to the A642 in Stanley. Download coordinates as: 53°41′30″N 1°29′09″W / 53.6918°N 1.4857°W / 53.6918; -1.4857 ( A642 road ) This England road or road transport-related article
1020-785: The A34 in Warwickshire became the A3400 after the M40 was built), and the remainder were downgraded to B or unclassified roads (e.g. the A38 , which was replaced by the M5 between Tiverton and Exeter ). Occasionally, the new motorway would take the name of the old A road rather than having its own number. The most notable example of that is the A1(M) . In England and Wales the road numbering system for all-purpose (i.e. non-motorway) roads
1080-673: The A38 road , a trunk road running from Bodmin to Mansfield starts in Zone 3, and is therefore numbered with an A3x number, even though it passes through Zones 4 and 5 to end in Zone 6. Additionally, the A1 in Newcastle upon Tyne has moved twice. Originally along the Great North Road, it then moved to the Tyne Tunnel , causing some of the roads in Zone 1 to lie in Zone 6. The designated A1 later moved to
1140-816: The Automobile Association in 1910). In 1904, he wrote the preface for the Automobile Club's first Automobile Handbook . Jeffreys also had roles with the Commercial Motor Users' Association and the Institution of Automobile Engineers (he was honorary treasurer from 1910 to 1933; the IAE merged into the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1947), founded the Motor Union Insurance Co Ltd (he
1200-599: The British road numbering system . In 1937 Jeffreys was described by former UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George as "the greatest authority on roads in the United Kingdom and one of the greatest in the whole world." A charity he founded in 1950, the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund , continues to support UK transport-related projects. William Rees Jeffreys was born at 7 Warwick Place in Paddington , London, on 1 December 1871,
1260-686: The C prefix and marked using pale green signs. There are also some CS prefixes for Cycle Superhighways, marked using magenta signs, but these are being phased out. Despite numerous large roads in Great Britain being part of the International E-road network , no road that forms part of this network is signposted as such and only the road's national designation is shown. The same is true in Northern Ireland. William Rees Jeffreys William Rees Jeffreys (1 December 1871 – 18 August 1954)
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#17328518015221320-748: The Letitia Chitty Reading Room) is sponsored by the Rees Jeffreys fund. The fund also sponsors MSc Transport students. In 2016, a Rees Jeffreys Road Fund report, A Major Road Network for England , recommended creation of England's Major Road Network , implemented in 2018. In 2018, the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund, with the Campaign for Better Transport , published a guide, Roads and the Environment: Putting an innovative approach at
1380-535: The Ministry of Transport was formed in 1919 and given authority to classify highways and to allocate funding for road maintenance, authority for which was granted by section 17 (2) of the Ministry of Transport Act 1919 . A classification system was created in 1922, under which important routes connecting large population centres, or for through traffic, were designated as Class I, and roads of lesser importance were designated as Class II. The definitive list of those roads
1440-663: The Roads Improvement Association , and later the same year became its honorary secretary. The RIA had been jointly established by the CTC and the National Cyclists' Union in October 1886, and initially focused on production of technical literature distributed to highways boards and surveyors to promote improved construction and maintenance methods. Jeffreys believed the RIA should focus more on political lobbying and push for
1500-645: The Scottish Office (Scottish Government after 1999), the decision was taken to adopt a scheme whereby motorways took the numbers of the all-purpose routes they replaced. As a result, there is no M7 (as no motorway follows the A7 ), and when the A90 was re-routed to replace the A85 south of Perth , the short M85 became part of the M90 . In England and Wales, the six single-digit numbers reflect
1560-538: The apparently anomalous numbers of the M48 and M49 motorways as spurs of the M4, and M271 and M275 motorways as those of the M27 . This numbering system was devised in 1958–59 by the then Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation , and applied only in England and Wales. It was decided to reserve the numbers 7, 8 & 9 for Scotland. In Scotland, where roads were the responsibility of
1620-400: The A road designation, for example A3(M) , A329(M) , A38(M) , A48(M) and A627(M) . B roads are numbered distributor roads , which have lower traffic densities than the main trunk roads, or A roads. This classification has nothing to do with the width or quality of the physical road, and B roads can range from dual carriageways to single track roads with passing places. B roads follow
1680-433: The CTC's Council and as honorary secretary of the RIA to become the board's first secretary – though he continued to recognise the pioneering role of cyclists (in his 1949 book, The King's Highway , he noted: "Cyclists were the class first to take a national interest in the conditions of the roads."). During its 10-year existence, the Road Board did little to improve the national road system, disbursing its funds mainly for
1740-587: The Horbury bypass) and leads to the junction with A638 west of Wakefield City Centre . In Wakefield it follows the route of A638 and A61 , branching off the latter north of the city centre and continuing via Stanley , Junction 30 of the M62 Motorway , Oulton , Swillington , and Garforth before meeting the M1 Motorway at Junction 47, where also A656 joins. North of the latter, the road continues as B1217. It
1800-409: The Rees Jeffreys Road Fund to offer financial support for education, research and physical road transport–related projects. The registered charity's main activities are in three areas: provision of support for academic posts and studentships; contributions to physical projects on land adjoining highways; and support for highway-related research projects. Imperial College 's Transport Library (next to
1860-568: The UK, in 1936 Jeffreys again complained: The Government has used the BBC night after night to convey that the appalling number for road accidents is due to careless and negligent drivers. This false suggestion is made by the Government to cover up its own shortcomings. The British motor-driver is the most cautious, considerate and law-abiding of any drivers in the world. The principle [ sic ] reason for
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1920-533: The advent of the A-road numbering event, and as a result required a new numbering system. They were given an M prefix, and in England and Wales a numbering system of their own not coterminous with that of the A-road network, though based on the same principle of zones. Running clockwise from the M1 the zones were defined for Zones 1 to 4 based on the proposed M2 , M3 and M4 motorways . The M5 and M6 numbers were reserved for
1980-816: The associated single digit route. For example, the A10 (London to King's Lynn) is the first main route clockwise from the A1, the A11 (London to Norwich) is the next, then the A12 (London to Lowestoft) and the A13 (London to Shoeburyness); the next radial is the A2 , followed by the A20 (London to Dover), and so on. These roads have been numbered either outwards from or clockwise around their respective hubs, depending on their alignment. The system continues to three and four digit numbers which further split and criss-cross
2040-609: The balance of the debate began to shift; he "became an arch motorist and the RIA morphed into a motoring organisation". In 1903 Jeffreys left the Board of Trade after being appointed administrative secretary of the Automobile Club of Great Britain (later the RAC) and secretary of the Motor Union of Great Britain and Ireland (established by the Automobile Club two years earlier; it amalgamated with
2100-487: The board's secretary in order to campaign for better roads as a free agent and chairman of the RIA. In 1928, Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill told Parliament that English roads were the best in the world. Jeffreys said Churchill was spouting "political dope": English roads were narrow, ill-designed and abounding with hidden corners and blind turns and were the most congested and overcrowded in
2160-497: The board's senior engineers, to devise a classification system and then assign numbers to the highways for identification purposes. The road numbering scheme eventually divided the British mainland into nine zones, six radiating from London. In 1913 and 1914, the Road Board also organised London Arterial Road Conferences in 1913–14 that revived ideas previously discussed by the 1903 Royal Commission on London Traffic. Jeffreys returned to
2220-580: The council of the Cyclists' Touring Club to gather information to issue as CTC guidance. He also explored Ireland, where he met Richard J. Mecredy , who helped form the Irish Roads Improvement Association. Jeffreys was elected to the council of the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1900, and chaired its rights and privileges committee from 1901 to 1906. In 1901 he became the CTC's representative at
2280-437: The country, the charity remembered its founder's request for Sussex. A viewpoint (created in 1968) is provided at Duncton Down on the A285 at Petworth , overlooking the playing fields of Seaford College . In East Sussex , a viewing platform was erected at High and Over giving views over the Cuckmere Valley . Other locations include (by date order where known): Since 1998, the Institution of Civil Engineers has presented
2340-552: The countryside at viewpoints and restful places. They would be available for children, hikers, cyclists and motorists to rest, play and take picnic meals. They should be laid out and tended so they can be enjoyed by all who pass by." He also thought that the parks would become obstacles to prevent ribbon development , and offered ten sums of £100 for the establishment of ten parks and hoped that one would be in West and another in East Sussex. Jeffreys died on 18 August 1954 in his Sussex home at Wivelsfield Hall in Wivelsfield Green , and
2400-421: The early years of the system, because it was a period of rapid expansion of the network and some numbered routes did not follow the most usual routes taken. The Trunk Roads Act 1936 gave the Ministry direct control of major routes and a new classification system was created to identify these routes. Originally, those numbers beginning in T were to be made public, but that was eventually deemed unnecessary. With
2460-465: The eldest of four children born to William George Jeffreys, an upholsterer, and his wife, Mary Ann, née Garratt. He was privately educated, and in 1891 joined the Board of Trade 's commercial, labour, and statistical department as a second division clerk; in his late 20s he studied statistics under Arthur Lyon Bowley at the London School of Economics . In his spare time, Jeffreys was a keen cyclist. Aged 18, he toured Scotland, and returned as member of
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2520-472: The enormous number of accidents is our inadequate road system. In 1937 David Lloyd George described Jeffreys as "the greatest authority on roads in the United Kingdom and one of the greatest in the whole world." In March 1942, Jeffreys wrote to the journal Roads and Road Construction , lamenting the British government's neglect of the Empire's roads, and its failure to recognise ‘the importance of roads for defence as well as for development’. Jeffreys wanted
2580-462: The government committed to implementing in 2017, with the aim of better targeting road funding. Some A roads are designated trunk roads , which implies that central government rather than local government has responsibility for them. A more recent classification is that of primary routes , the category of recommended routes for long-distance traffic. Primary routes include both trunk and non-trunk roads. Some sections of A roads have been improved to
2640-401: The growing number of motorists. As the Board needed to work out which roads should be funded, upgraded or replaced, its secretary, William Rees Jeffreys , appointed Henry Maybury , one of the Board's senior engineers, to devise a classification system and then assign numbers to the highways for identification purposes. The work was interrupted by the First World War . It did not resume until
2700-574: The heart of RIS2 . In September 2021, the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund launched a £150,000 'future roads' competition to mark the 150th anniversary of Jeffreys's birth. Trustees asked entrants to consider their vision of how roads (motorways, highways, streets and footways) could best work for everybody for the next 50 years. In March 2022, two winners of the competition were announced; the Eloy connected vehicle platform and Reed Mobility's automated vehicle system each won £75,000 to support delivery of their ideas. In providing several memorial viewpoints across
2760-460: The introduction of motorways in the late 1950s, a new classification of "M" was introduced. In many cases the motorways duplicated existing stretches of A road, which therefore lost much of their significance and were in some cases renumbered. There was no consistent approach to the renumbering – some A roads retained their existing number as non-primary roads (e.g. the A40 running alongside the M40 ), others were given "less significant" numbers (e.g.
2820-420: The other two planned long distance motorways. The Preston Bypass , the UK's first motorway section, should have been numbered A6(M) under the scheme decided upon, but it was decided to keep the number M6 as had already been applied. The first full-length motorway in the UK was the M1 motorway . Shorter motorways typically take their numbers from a parent motorway in contravention of the zone system, explaining
2880-467: The radials. Lower numbers originate closer to London than higher numbered ones. As roads have been improved since the scheme commenced, some roads with 3 or 4 digit numbers have increased in significance, for example the A127 , A1079 and A414 . New routes have also been allocated 3 or 4 digit numbers, for example the Edinburgh City Bypass is the A720 . The Major Road Network is a proposed classification of major local-authority controlled A roads that
2940-464: The reconstruction and improvement of road surfaces with small amounts on minor alignment improvements and even less on new roads (exceptions included early work on the A4 in West London, the Croydon bypass, and development of the Fosse Way in Leicestershire). A factor in this inactivity was the appointment of a board chairman, George Gibb , who was more interested in rail transport. While Jeffreys blamed Treasury, landowners and railway opposition,
3000-474: The road network. These radials are supplemented by two-digit codes which are routes that may be slightly less important, but may still be classified as trunk routes, although many of these routes have lost a lot of their significance due to motorway bypasses, or the upgrading of other A-roads (such as the A38 (M) ). These routes are not all centred on London, but as far as possible follow the general principle that their number locates them radially clockwise from
3060-582: The same number; for example, the Leicester Ring Road and a road in Cumbria are both designated A594. This scheme applies only to England , Scotland and Wales ; a separate system using similar conventions is used in Northern Ireland , as well as outside the United Kingdom in the Isle of Man , Jersey and British Overseas Territories . Work on classification began in 1913. The Road Board had been established in 1909 to administer Vehicle Excise Duty - money raised by taxation to pay for new road construction and for repair of damage done to existing roads by
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#17328518015223120-496: The same numbering scheme as A roads, but almost always have 3- and 4-digit designations. Many 3-digit B roads outside the London area are former A roads which have been downgraded owing to new road construction; others may link smaller settlements to A roads. B roads in the county of Devon have further sub-classifications according to their accessibility. This is due to the rural nature of Devon's topology making some roads unsuitable for certain types of vehicle. The classification
3180-405: The same standard as motorways, but do not completely replace the existing road; they form a higher standard part of the route for those which are not excluded. These sections retain the same number but are suffixed with (M), for example the A1(M) and A404(M) . There have been occasions where this designation has been used to indicate motorway bypasses of an existing road, but the original retains
3240-471: The theme of planning arterial roads in a paper presented to the Town Planning Institute in April 1917. Jeffreys served on two departmental committees: the Treasury Committee on Motor Car Licence Duties (1916), and the Departmental Committee on Taxation and Regulation of Road Vehicles (1920–1923). In 1919, after World War I , the ineffective Road Board was disbanded and replaced by a new Ministry of Transport . By this point, in 1918, Jeffreys had resigned as
3300-460: The traditionally most important radial routes coming out of London. Starting with the A1 which heads due north, numbers were allocated sequentially in a clockwise direction, thus: Similarly, in Scotland, important roads radiating from Edinburgh have single-digit numbers, thus: While these routes remain the basis for the numbering of the A road network, they are no longer necessarily major roads, having been bypassed by motorways or other changes to
3360-405: The western bypass around the city, and roads between the two found themselves back in Zone 1. For the most part the roads affected retained their original numbers throughout. Elsewhere when single-digit roads were bypassed, roads were often re-numbered in keeping with the original zone boundaries. A few roads are anomalously numbered . Motorways first came to Britain over three decades after
3420-409: The world. He said £100 million should be immediately spent on building new roads. In 1929 a total of 6,016 people were killed on UK roads; despite the increase in vehicular traffic since then, the number killed in 2013 was 1,713 people. Jeffreys and the RIA continued to campaign for "new roads, safe roads, beautiful roads", inspiring the 1928 establishment of the Roads Beautifying Association (RBA),
3480-414: Was a British cyclist and early campaigner for road improvements who became a key figure in the early 20th-century development of the UK highway system . As honorary secretary and later chairman of the Roads Improvement Association and the first secretary of the Road Board (which in 1919 became part of the Ministry of Transport ), he was an early advocate of a ring road around London, and helped instigate
3540-506: Was a director for 23 years), and he became a life member of the RAC. In 1908, he was also appointed secretary of the British Section of the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses (PIARC), a role which he later said "enabled gaps in my own knowledge to be filled from first hand information given by men who held positions of authority." In 1909 when the Road Board was established to administer funds raised by David Lloyd George 's new taxes on motor vehicles, Jeffreys resigned from
3600-440: Was published on 1 April 1923, following consultations with local authorities . Government funding towards the repairs of these roads were set at 60% for the former and 50% for the latter. Shortly after this, the numbers started to appear in road atlases and on signs on the roads themselves, making them a tool for motorists in addition to their use for determining funding. The numbers of the roads changed quite frequently during
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