Signposting is one of the great civilising forces in a city: it gives the regular traveller reassurance and the stranger hope. For today’s motorist London’s road signage can be hit and miss, but it wasn’t always this way. This is the story of the “Through Roads” programme – the last great attempt to bring order to the road signs of the city.
London is a maze. Only the very newest parts of its vast urban sprawl were ever planned in any meaningful sense. Even when the city was small by today’s standards, remaining largely within its Roman walls, the streets were often narrow, winding and looked much like each other. Today, with the traffic often nose-to-tail and any number of one-way systems removing all prospect of taking a direct route it often remains difficult to navigate.
Abercrombie’s new London
London’s devious and patternless form was meant to have been swept away in bold reconstruction at the end of the Second World War. As the war neared its end, the London County Council (LCC) and the Ministry of Works enlisted the eminent planner Patrick Abercrombie to plan for peacetime, a commission that led to the County of London Plan and then the Greater London Plan. These were vast, comprehensive proposals for the transformation of the whole urban area to correct its many deficiencies.
Central to those plans was the reorganisation of the whole road network, with the creation of new major roads to channel traffic and keep it away from residential and shopping areas. London’s roads would be fit for purpose, logical and direct; navigating would be simple. But when the war ended it became clear that the urgent need for homes and schools would command much of what funding was available for rebuilding. Indeed even if the money had been available, it is likely that the planning apparatus of the 1940s would have been almost incapable of implementing something on the vast scale that Abercrombie had originally envisioned.
In 1946, the LCC attempted to make some progress by scaling back its ambitions. Rather than the whole complex road network, it proposed starting with just the “Arterial ‘A’ Ring”, a single motorway-style Inner Ring Road. The proposal was not well received. A Parliamentary Committee refused to give the LCC the power to safeguard the line of its new road and the Minister of Transport, Alfred Barnes, refused to fund it. In private, even its creators had its doubts about the likelihood of it ever being built.
“After planning the ‘A’ Ring we came to the conclusion that it was completely impossible as an urban motorway largely on economic grounds”
Patrick Abercrombie
The death of the ‘A’ Ring marked the end of immediate post-war ambitions for major road-building in London and new roads remained off the agenda for the next fifteen years. But the traffic problem hadn’t gone away and car ownership was soaring. Having recovered from the wartime slump in traffic levels, by 1950 the number of cars on the roads had actually doubled compared to the years just before the war. More than ever it became clear that an effective way to move traffic around and through the capital was required.
To the South Bank and the Festival
This situation was brought into sharp focus by events unfolding just south of the river. For while a ration-book version of Abercrombie’s vision was being started in earnest, Clement Attlee’s government was preparing for the Festival of Britain. The celebration of culture, achievement and a bright future would be centred on the South Bank and would draw unprecedented numbers of visitors for the whole summer of 1951. Many of those travelling to London would be coming by road, and it was all too obvious to many that there they would find themselves falling prey to its traffic jams and lost in its illogical streets. Something needed to be done.
“The Minister is anxious, now that the London ‘A’ Ring has been dropped, to see what can be done to improve the traffic flow.”
Internal Memorandum, Ministry of Transport
Alfred Barnes, Minister of Transport, was the man faced with solving these problems. With wide scale new road development off the table he came up with a different policy – one intended to make more effective use of the roads London already had. The flow of traffic was to be improved by designating “Through Routes” for motorists to follow. Main roads and ring roads would be selected for directness and speed, and, most importantly of all, equipped with a city-wide system of consistent signposting. Routes would be found for traffic to avoid travelling through the central area. London would be made logical.
A lack of direction
The idea that Barnes’ proposal for clear, logical signage was radical thinking may be difficult to grasp today. It’s important, however, to put these ideas into the context of the time. To do that we need to look at the state of the signposts that faced motorists as they braved London’s roads in 1950.
The Ministry of Transport had standard designs for direction signs, so across London their appearance was serviceable and consistent. As we recently explored in LR Magazine Issue 1, London’s (and indeed Britain’s) main roads had also been classified for nearly 30 years by this point, with A- and B-road numbers well established. All of this was largely academic though. For on the streets themselves few signs existed and those that did were often unhelpful.
A surviving Through Routes road sign probably dating from the 1950s on Crystal Palace Parade. It is typical of post-war direction signs across London.
The reason for this was, quite simply, the war. Many direction signs had been taken down when fear of a German invasion had been at its height. Many more had been damaged by the Luftwaffe’s bombs and not replaced. Even the road signs that did exist (whether pre- or post-war) had been erected with little attempt at an overarching policy for selecting destinations, so there was often no consistency from one junction to the next. On some main roads, successive attempts to signpost useful destinations led to sign clutter on an incredible scale, while a few streets beyond there might be nothing.
A broken circle
Most signs pointed the way in or out of central London, and few offered opportunities to travel between the suburbs or bypass the City and West End. The only ring road of any consequence in 1950 was the North Circular, which ran in fits and starts from Gunnersbury to Gants Hill, with the gaps in its 1920s and 30s dual carriageway plugged with existing streets. The South Circular Road was little more than conceptual, its name principally referring to the pre-war proposals for a new road matching the North Circular. In lieu of that being built, the A205 was signposted across South London, but it wasn’t in any meaningful sense a ring road.
The two Circulars didn’t even meet to form the circle that their name implied. The A205 began at Shepherd’s Bush, several miles along the A40 from the North Circular, and finished at Woolwich, leaving a lengthy gap from there to Gants Hill where no attempt had been made to join them up at all. There were no other ring roads, except the North Orbital Road, an incomplete attempt at 1930s road building that ran only from Watford to Hatfield.
Because there was no way round, long distance traffic that wanted to get from one side of London to the other would commonly just pass straight through the middle.
Straight through the centre
In fact, shocking as it may now seem, journeys into and through central London were positively encouraged. Central London was far more navigable than the suburbs: the streets in the centre were generally wider and better equipped for heavy volumes of traffic, and importantly, the routes in and out were more obvious and better signposted.
Nothing highlighted this seemingly counter-intuitive focus on the centre more than some of the signage that could be found in the heart of London at the time. In 1948, the Ministry of Transport had erected long-distance signs on routes between London and the major ports of Dover, Southampton and Harwich. These signs covered not just the long journey cross-country, but doggedly continued right in to the very heart of the city.
“[Signs have been] specially erected to tell us that Tottenham Court Road leads to Harwich, which, at the relevant point, is marked as being 77 miles away. It is curious how few people who live or work in this part of Tottenham Court Road have noticed their new association with Harwich. Many refuse to believe it until the gleaming white and green signpost is pointed out to them.”
The Times, 22 August 1951
At least the Ministry’s signs had a clear goal. In fact, many ordinary road signs were not erected by the Ministry or the Boroughs at all. Until the 1960s the AA and RAC’s signs were officially recognised and, nationwide, they had designed, installed and paid for a sizeable proportion of all Britain’s direction signs. Unfortunately, while their designs conformed to the Ministry of Transport’s standards, their text often did not, and the two motoring organisations each had their own ideas about which destinations ought to be used. At best their signs were inconsistent; at worst, they were directly in conflict with each other’s and the Ministry’s efforts. In East London, they chose – and signposted – their own completely separate route for the North Circular.
Even the Festival itself was contributing to the chaos. It had already erected special purple signs intended to help motorists from outside London. Inbound, they pointed the way to the two main sites on the South Bank and at Battersea. On the rear face of the sign panel (and therefore usually on the wrong side of the road for traffic trying to leave London) they just read “Exit North” or “Exit West” – not the most helpful of legends.
Enter Alfred Barnes and his quest for a logical system.
From nothing, a system
On 20 June 1950, Alfred Barnes’ former chauffeur, Mr. Beardon, was likely somewhat bemused at finding himself summoned back his old employer’s office at the Ministry of Transport. His confusion likely didn’t end there, as after pleasantries had been exchanged he found himself bombarded with questions.
Calmly and systematically Barnes asked him how he would go about getting to different points in London from various directions, and had a civil servant take detailed notes. Beardon’s suggestions – dozens of them, recorded street by street as he sat in the Minister’s office and recited them – became the utterly unscientific first step in selecting the main roads that the Ministry signposted. They still form the basis for the signed network that London’s traffic still uses today.
Beardon’s list was circulated to the Divisional Road Engineer for London and the Ministry’s Chief Engineer, and the business of turning London’s streets into a navigable network began.
The language of communication
Those involved quickly realised that it wasn’t just the routes that were important – it was very much the visual language of signage as well.
They investigated ways of colour coding roads, with each radial route equipped with signs of a specific colour like Tube lines. Very quickly this became messy and unmanageable. They also considered assigning them new numbers. In one scenario, routes leading out of London were to be given logical numbers branching off each other, where branches off route 1 would be 1.1, 1.2, and branches off those 1.1.1, 1.1.2. Central London itself would be identified on signs with a zero. This too proved impractical, as ideas like this rarely translate well to the unstructured layout of London’s roads.
Through Routes emerges
It was quickly realised that any radical idea would require a huge extra effort in driver education, and that the Ministry’s aims could be achieved much more easily through something more conventional. London didn’t need an entirely new method to identify its roads; it just needed that missing layer of logic and consistency applied to existing signage. In fact, it needed something that had not been devised before: a navigation policy, known as “Through Routes,” which could be applied to the whole city.
Ministry of Transport diagram showing destinations selected for the Through Routes signs. Many of these choices are still in use today, and others have only been modified where a motorway has replaced an older road. (Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.)
Until this time, signposting had happened per-junction or per-road. For the first time, the Ministry of Transport chose a list of destinations and a method of indicating the places that might be reached by turning this way or that on ring roads. It then set about applying these decisions to the entire metropolis. All signposts would be replaced, and every last one would be erected with reference to the same plan. It may seem obvious today, but in 1950 this was a revolution.
All change
It soon became clear that the wholesale replacement of all London’s road signs presented opportunities to make other major changes as well, and the creation of the Through Routes scheme grew to include rerouting, reclassifying and designating new main roads on a remarkable scale.
Perhaps the most significant change was the reshaping of the North and South Circular Roads. The A205 was sent west from Clapham through Wandsworth, Putney and Kew to meet the North Circular at Gunnersbury, while the North Circular was given an official routing south from Waterworks Corner to the Woolwich Ferry, completing the circle.
The Inner Ring Road was also a creation of this scheme. It had its genesis in a particularly successful element of the transport plan from the Festival of Britain: a special route for coach traffic to avoid Central London had been devised, circling Westminster and the City on Euston Road, Tower Bridge, Vauxhall Bridge and Park Lane. With a few adjustments to its route, it was made permanent. In fact this makeshift orbital is still with us today – it now forms the Congestion Charge boundary.
Until 1951, road numbers didn’t always follow the most-used routes. The A1 still ran through the middle of Finchley and Barnet, while its bypass was called A555. The Through Routes scheme attempted to put an end to this. Egregious numbering decisions of the 1920s were swept away, putting the A1 on the Barnet Bypass, the A40 on the Western Avenue and the A10 on the Great Cambridge Road, among others.
With the main roads chosen and the ring roads established, drawings were produced for new direction signs at all key junctions. The new signs would have bright yellow backing boards, to make them obvious and easily recognisable, and would all follow the same simple layout.
Finding the middle
As new signs were to be installed all over London, and distances would have to be calculated for them all, the opportunity was taken to correct a quirk of history. Until 1951, London did not have a central point to which distances were measured.
Traditionally, there were actually seven such places, all related to the itineraries of mail coaches in centuries gone by. They were incredibly inconsistent, and only one was within a mile of Charing Cross. Depending on the direction of approach, distances might be measured from Marble Arch, Hyde Park Corner, Westminster Bridge, London Bridge, Whitechapel Church, Shoreditch Church or (perhaps the most obscure of all) the site of Hick’s Hall on St John Street, a building that had been demolished in 1778.
It might be expected that a rational decision to choose just one point would be welcomed, but in fact press coverage was decidedly mixed and there appeared to be some considerable affection for the old system. Nonetheless a new datum point was chosen – the statue of Charles I on the south side of Trafalgar Square, the original site of the Charing Cross. Indeed Westminster Council put a plaque on the site, still there today, which marks the significance of King Charles’ feet.
All mileages on the new signs – and indeed on all road signs erected in the capital since that time – have measured their distance to London from this point.
A plaque marking the new datum point.
The Ministry didn’t elaborate on its reasons for selecting the statue on Trafalgar Square, but until that time it appears to have only been significant for one reason. In 1831, the London Hackney Carriage Act selected the statue as the centre point of the six-mile radius that defines The Knowledge. Motorists nationwide now count their distance from London with reference to Charing Cross, seemingly because that’s where London’s cab drivers consider the centre of the metropolis to be. Perhaps it was thought that there was no higher authority on the subject.
The statue of Charles I on the south side of Trafalgar Square
Spreading the load
In all, the Through Routes scheme was an attempt to redistribute traffic flows across Greater London to make journeys simpler and easier. Many of the Through Routes were created by commandeering existing streets, like Mortlake Road in Kew, which was elevated from a B-Road to the South Circular. Almost all of the roads used in this way were residential or fronted with shops and other premises.
In hindsight, it may seem odd that a peaceful street might be singled out to take heavy traffic, with signs erected to concentrate the flow of vehicles on one unlucky row of shops, pubs and houses. To do so would be unthinkable today. But in the early 1950s, it followed the established and accepted principle of “spreading the load” – easing the burden on existing main roads by drafting in other nearby routes to add to the available road space.
Time would prove that it was not a particularly effective or inclusive way of planning routes and roads. There was no right of reply for those who lived and worked on the streets that were affected. It was also an approach that would be discredited in “Traffic in Towns”, Colin Buchanan’s 1963 report about the uncomfortable reality of attempting to remodel cities for the benefit of motor cars. Until Buchanan’s warnings were heard though, London would continue to see hapless side streets used to create one-way streets and gyratories for its main roads – many of which remain in force today.
Late for the Festival
Despite initially being envisioned as a solution fit for the Festival of Britain, it was perhaps inevitable that as the scope of the work required grew so would its delivery slip. In the end, Alfred Barnes’ Through Routes scheme missed the Festival completely. Not that this missed deadline drew much notice – the Ministry was already firmly focused on not just providing yellow signs on main roads and ring roads, but was also erecting a dense network of blue-backed local direction signs across the rest of London’s roads. The cost of the project was estimated at £140,000 in 1954, but at that point it still had another four years to run. The equivalent economic cost today would be one hundred times that sum.
An original Through Routes local sign on the A212 Sydenham Road, refurbished and fitted with new destination panels. Its survival may be due to a Preservation Order.
Stepney holds out
By 1957, erection of yellow signs on main roads was almost complete and about three quarters of blue signs were also up. Two hurdles remained. One was the provision of blue signs in central London, an area that now had a definite boundary thanks to the Inner Ring Road. The signs there would follow the new and sensible idea that they should indicate road junctions and not localities so as to be more specific. This policy is still used today; it’s why signs within the Inner Ring Road point to places like Parliament Square, Ludgate Circus and Bank.
The other hurdle was that there were no new signs at all in the Borough of Stepney.
Stepney’s Borough Engineer did not think much of Albert Barnes’ plan to make London navigable, and its belligerent Council Chamber made a great show of refusing to cooperate, insisting that there were more pressing demands on its finances in such a deprived inner-city location.
“It would seem that the good citizens of Stepney subscribe very closely to the lesson of Matthew, Chapter VIII, Verse 39: ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign and there shall be no sign given to it.’”
Civil Service memorandum, undated, 1957
Without Stepney Borough’s assistance – and more importantly their share of the funding commitment – there would be no signs in their part of East London, and the new Inner Ring Road was rendered meaningless by the gap in its eastern side.
Stepney’s elected members and recalcitrant Engineer finally changed their mind in early March 1957 and announced that they would began work preparing their Borough’s new signposts. It is almost certainly the case that this did not represent a change of heart on Stepney’s part. Just a few days before, the Ministry of Transport had finally been granted the power by Parliament to force local authorities to erect road signs. The Borough had simply decided they would rather jump than suffer the indignity of being pushed.
A state of gradual decay
The Through Routes of the 1950s were the first and last attempt to comprehensively review signposting across London and make its roads truly coherent.
Since then, newer signs have continued to use the guidance of the 1950s, or more commonly simply copied the old text onto a new sign. Huge numbers have been taken down at the end of their useful life and never replaced.
The only comparable project was a review of Primary Route signs in 1995, which systematically reviewed and replaced green signs on main roads across Greater London. Millions of pounds were spent, and the job was commendably thorough, but its designers would have to admit that they were still, to an extent, relying on the groundwork laid in the fifties – going right back to the musings of a retired government chauffeur. On the TfL Red Route network they are kept up to date.
This sign on Lordship Lane in Dulwich is a modern attempt to copy the design of a Through Routes sign, complete with semi-circular top panel.
On minor roads though there has never been another review. The legacy of the blue Through Route signs is visible not just in the choice of destinations on modern black-and-white signs across London, but also in their layout, with some of London’s boroughs appearing to rely entirely on copying old signs. If you see a newer panel with a layout that seems unusual now then this is almost certainly the cause – it’s a well-intentioned (but misguided) attempt to copy a Through Routes sign’s layout on the sign that has replaced it.
Sometimes, though, those signs simply aren’t replaced at all. Today, many boroughs actually take down far more signs than they replace.
Into the future
It would be easy to decry this decay. To lament this lack of central policy and prescription. But we no longer live in an era where heavy traffic can be redirected down previously quiet streets without protest. While on streets that are already in use as main roads it is tolerated, it would be undesirable to inflict the nuisance of its traffic load onto another thoroughfare, and it would be even less acceptable to clear a path for a new purpose-built road to relieve it. Altering the status quo is thus rarely an option. If a review were to be conducted today it would, therefore, be forced to conclude that we should continue using broadly the same set of roads for the same purposes as we do already. Traffic engineers do not have the freedom (or indeed the lack of regard) needed to recast the flow of traffic as they did half a century ago.
Nor, in the world of satellite navigation, do signs perhaps hold the vital role – at least for many younger drivers – that they used to. With instructions on everything from route to lane ordered by the device on the dashboard, it is marking temporary, rather than permanent routes that many drivers subconsciously see as the road sign’s primary role.
Nonetheless, navigation and wayfinding continues to be in everyone’s interests: not only is it a convenience for those who have to find their way through the streets, it’s also beneficial to everyone who lives and works in London. The view of the sat-nav is a simplistic one, and London is a complex city. One where channelling specific types of traffic onto the roads that match their purpose and limit their impact is going to become increasingly crucial if London is to continue to grow.
Indeed, even in the era of satellite navigation, CityMapper and Journey Planner, good direction signage continues to prosper in certain quarters. TfL and the boroughs continue to invest in street signs and kerbside maps for pedestrians in a project called Legible London; Cycle Superhighways are provided with clear and thorough direction signs – signs that are now sometimes the only direction signs at a road junction at all; heavy goods traffic continues to be channelized by the London-wide system of HGV restrictions. It can seem highly incongruous that clear directions for the benefit of all road users are not considered an equal priority and can even be treated with apathy by some of London’s boroughs.
But then, as this article has hopefully shown, signposting has never really been fashionable nor a priority. So perhaps it is best simply to be happy that, in the form of the Through Roads scheme, an enlightened and concerted effort to define navigation in London once existed.
The mood may not have lasted and the evidence of that work is now mostly gone, but look closely enough and its influence still remains.
As well as writing for LR, Chris Marshall runs and writes for CBRD, one of the foremost websites about the British road network. He has been researching and documenting plans, ideas and developments in and on London’s roads for longer than he cares to remember.
Actually the North Orbital reaches just beyond Denham as the A412.
An excellent summary of some of London’s signage issues. It is noticeable that there are still parts of town (Enfield, Twickenham & Bexleyheath/Welling are the first that spring to mind) that have incredibly substandard signage. After all these decades, I’d be amazed if anything worthwhile gets done to rectify these issues. As for now, just make sure that you drive around with a decent map or satnav!
Though the link to Chris Marshall’s site is OK, its name is CBRD rather than CRBD. I know that he thinks the full title a bit naff, more in keeping with a youthful enthusiast than with the mature person he has become, but he’s stuck with it in view of its central place as a key reference for amateurs and professionals alike.
[Typo was my fault. Fixed – JB]
Interesting article Chris, keep up the good work – perhaps an article on the Highland roads next ? 😉
@Chris Marshal
A very interesting article. Very much liked the “Ministry of Transport diagram”. Shame not to mention the Ringways, but I know there’s loads on your site about them.
Not your issue, but the layout at the top of the page isn’t working on my Windows 10/Chrome setup. It looked great on my Nexus 7/Chrome when I read it earlier.
Here’s what happening for me:
https://ukfree.tv/styles/images/2015/layout_issue.jpg
What a treat at breakfast-time, I read this article before Diamond Geezer this morning!
Fascinating article, thank you. What happens to old road signs when they are taken down? There is of course a brisk trade in old (and replica) railway signs and totems.
Like so many approaches, the old MoT’s attitude to signs in London – and roads in general – was predicated on a wholly misleading view of the needs of strategic traffic and strategic roads. Leaving aside the fact that nobody has been able to define what makes traffic or roads strategic – I regularly asked this question within the Mayor’s roads task force without receiving an answer – the volume of longer distance traffic in London is consistently overestimated. Even on the busiest and mainest of roads in London , aside from motorways and motorway style roads, the overwhelming majority of traffic is local. Even before the M25 was built, the amount of central London traffic that came from outside London was less than 1%. With that in mind, perhaps the absence of any more ‘strategic’ signing reviews is not surprising.
@Briantist – cheers. Looking / fixing now.
The North Circular (and the A406 number) didn’t technically reach Gants Hill until after the renumbering coupled with this resigning. From the mid-20s it ended at the Green Man (after a short bit of new build opened at Whipps Cross) and the plan (at least in 1937) was to extend it to Gallions from there, via Manor Park and East Ham. The section to Gants Hill was the A1081 Woodford Spur of Eastern Avenue.
The A412’s 1930s West Hyde bypass was named ‘North Orbital Road’, in the hopes of linking it with the A405 new build route from Hunton Bridge to Hatfield (which finally happened in the 1970s). That name doesn’t mean that it actually was an orbital road.
Thank you for an interesting article that gives LR a better roads balance.
________________________
Does “channelized” mean channelled?
Precise English needs only the odd Z and the shortest words possible to convey the message.
At best their signs were inconsistent; at worst, they were directly in conflict with each other’s and the Ministry’s efforts.
Like the two signposts I photographed on the outskirts of Basingstoke, 30 years ago, pointing in opposite directions & both saying: “Town Centre” ????
No, you could not make it up ….
Charing Cross (original) as zero point …
Hmm .. anyone else here come across The Lawyer’s farewell to Charing Cross – usually sung to the tune of Prince Rupert’s March”
There’s another lesson for over-optimistic “planners” (of any sort) there, as well>
… For fear the King should come again,
Pray pull down TYBURN too. (!)
@quinlet – the continued use of Super Primary Destinations (a category removed in 1994) in London is almost unique in urban settings.
And then there’s Oxford, Aylesbury (why is the A41 to Aylesbury, rather than Watford, which the M1 is happy to sign despite them both going to Watford? madness!) and Chelmsford – none of which were Super Primary, all of which are signed way too prematurely.
My main problem with navigating London (I rarely drive there) is that I simply don’t know its geography enough. I find that the signs are either too general “Central London” or too local, i.e. within a couple of miles.
I suspect that the problem is actually the maps that I use to plan my route don’t highlight the waypoints that the signs use, thus showing that signage goes beyond merely the physical but also extends into cartography.
quinlet says “Even on the busiest and mainest of roads in London , aside from motorways and motorway style roads, the overwhelming majority of traffic is local. ”
I sugggest that this does not make much difference. Local traffic does not need permanent signs, most drivers know exactly where they are going, and even if they do not, signs cannot help them much, because they are making for a specific road.
If signs are needed at all these days, it is for the benefit of longer-distance drivers who are not using a satnav. It does not matter how small a proportion of traffic they make up. The same would have applied earlier (with deletion of the satnav reference).
A fascinating article.
Regarding the designation of roads in London, is there any official distinction between an Axxx road, an Axxxx road and a B road? Or are they now merely labels?
I’m asking because I’m aware of some residents on an Axxxx road in West London who enquired about closing the road at one end to reduce rat running. Apparently the response was “We can’t do that, it’s an A road”.
Now the average traffic volumes along the road are just over three thousand vehicles a day, so a bit intrusive for a residential road, but hardly a major through route, particularly given there is a larger Axxx road running alongside.
So is “it’s an A road” just a convenient excuse to fob-off residents? Or is there actually a particular process for closing-off or re-designating a road depending upon its designation?
@Reynolds 953
Interesting questions. LBM goes into the background behind how things got designated as A and B roads originally in his roads article in Issue 1 (which will go on the site at some point next month as well). It’d be interesting to know how much official governance and policy exists behind the designation process now though.
Not an issue unique to London, but there does need to be a fundamental rethink from the Borough level upwards about what each street is actually for. There are many streets that are really just residential, often not far from “main roads”, that are used as “handy shortcuts” by construction traffic, delivery vehicles, taxis etc. A classic example, as can be seen on its webcam, is Abbey Road, where tourists trying to take pictures on the zebra crossing contend with an awful lot of LGVs.
Of course, many of them are not navigating by signposts- they’re reliant on their GPS, which gladly routes them down unsuitable streets. Signposting can help reduce traffic on the wrong roads by directing it in a favoured direction, but that doesn’t stop the GPS followers. That’s where the “filtered permeability” options come in- restricted access by signpost (camera enforced as needed), by bollard and by permanent restriction.
Traffic in London may not be “strategic” on a national scale, but London is vast enough to have significant internal “strategic” traffic. Routing that carefully, by signposting and by other means, is the starting point. Reducing short private car journeys is the other key.
At least in the UK we rarely use, at multi-direction junctions, “All Routes” or “Other routes”. I have seen in France junctions simply signed with the dread choice “Toutes Directions” and “Autres Directions”.
@Reynolds953
There’s now no difference between an A and a B road, other than considered importance. There was, until relatively recently, more grant for A roads than B roads than C roads.
As for the number of numbers – originally 4-digit roads were for short links (with ‘London’ getting the Ax2xx block), while 3-digit roads were a bit longer (1- and 2-digit roads were chosen beforehand). However any new numbers had to be taken from the spares (and until 1935 were almost always sequential), and there weren’t many spare 3-digit numbers (none wrt 1xx, 3xx and 4xx) so they got 4-digit numbers.
With B roads, there are no 1- or 2-digit numbers. The 3-digit numbers were assigned by geography – ‘London’ having the x00-49 block and then the rest of the country having, heading sequentially from London, x50-89 followed by x000-x999. So the next B road out from the B489 was simply the B4000.
Within 15 months of classification (April ’23) a rerouting of the A1 in Yorkshire had turned the Hull-York-A1 road from the A66 to the A1079, thus cementing that length of number wasn’t equal to importance.
@John Bull & @Si – thanks for that. It does sound that “it’s an A-road..” may have been used as a convenient excuse and possible changes to the road should be considered based actual traffic usage rather than a label assigned a long time in the past.
Reynolds: Yes. Totally excuse. Even if there was a law saying that A-roads cannot be blocked, there would have been a simple answer to that: renumber it first (perhaps to no number) before blocking it!
Great article, and from a welcome familiar name! My transport geekery began with road-fandom, and CBRD has long been an excellent resource. Its thoughtfulness and comprehensive research make it very much the UK road equivalent of LR, and it’s good to see the two come together.
R.E. the Times quote about Tottenham Court Road being signposted as leading towards Harwich: how would such a route have continued? Surely you’d go via the City and Mile End Road? Or would the signage have taken you up to Euston Road and then right via Angel and Shoreditch?
@AI_S
Following the Roads Task Force there is now a recategorisation of roads in London taking place. This is splitting roads into categories based both on their ‘movement’ importance and on their ‘place’ importance. There is a scale of 3 in each dimension leading to a 9 box grid. This ranges from ‘arterial’ roads (High movement, low place, such as Westway or the A13 in Rainham) through to ‘city places’ (High place importance but low movement importance, such as Leicester Square). The low movement,low place importance roads are easy to deal with and these make up the vast majority of local residential roads. More interesting are the high movement, high place locations, like King’s Cross or Parliament Square, which present interesting but difficult challenges.
David Fisher
Camden,Camden Rd,7 Sisters Rd,Forest Rd,Waterworks corner…..
@Slugabed – Ah, OK, thanks. And then Woodford Avenue, Eastern Avenue I assume?
Looking at a map, has Forest Road ever been primary? It looks odd with Seven Sisters Road being primary but just ending at Tottenham Hale. The A10 isn’t arterial quality until a couple of miles further on (Great Cambridge Road), so surely there’d be negligible advantage in going A10-A406 over just continuing east on the A503?
@Al__S
TfL have tried to focus on the purpose of a street through something they call “street families” although I don’t know if the concept has had any influence on the real world so far.
https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/londons-street-family-chapters-1-2.pdf
The approach considers both the “movement” and “place” aspects of a street. A typical traffic engineer usually only considers movement so we end up with multi-function streets that are through roads as well as shopping areas or residential areas, to the detriment of both.
I recently came across something called “Braess’s Paradox” which is a mathematical explanation of something observed in real life; new roads sometimes increase journey times and road closures sometimes decrease journey times. It certainly isn’t a given that closing roads will result in widespread gridlock and congestion.
There is a balance between making an area more pleasant for residents and the convenience of people driving and I think there is a good argument that the balance should be tilted more towards people not in cars rather than people in them. However the consultation and communication involved with a road closing process seems to be one of the most controversial things a council can do in London.
I moved to London in the late 1990s from Australia and found London road signs unhelpful. I thought that London was using a system designed for navigating around the countryside, instead of for an urban environment.
In the countryside one can see the names of approaching towns and villages on ones map and on the signs. But in a large town many suburb names are unknown and not obvious on maps. Drivers need to see the names of the streets, because that is what is prominent on the city maps. Cities like Los Angeles do this very well with the name of the intersecting street clearly written on every traffic light stanchion. In London, street signs are hard to find and typically near ground level where they are easily obscured by vehicles.
Malcolm suggested earlier that most journeys are local and so don’t need good signage. But in a place the size of London there are a significant amount of journeys of say 5 miles where many drivers will find themselves in unfamiliar suburbs with road signs that don’t really assist.
Traffic reports on the radio refer to “M25 clockwise” or “M25 anticlockwise”, yet the approach signs on the radial motorways give ‘Heathrow’ or ‘Gatwick’ as options and leave the motorist (speeding towards the junction at over a mile a minute) to set up a map of London in their mind, add two airports, and then work out where they are in relation to those two airports and which exit slip (all of which take you off in a clockwise direction) is correct. Some people are good at this, but not everyone.
Twenty years ago I met a man who actually designed signs for motorways and I asked him why there were no simple ‘circle with arrowhead’ symbols on the signs to signify clockwise and anticlockwise? He could give me no satisfactory answer (“We know best”) yet it is quicker to tell the time with an analogue clock than with a digital and symbols in general are more quickly understood than words.
Can Chris Marshall offer any reason why ‘circle with arrowhead’ symbols are not used?
I hate navigating by sign in London, unless I know the area. The signage is terribly inadequate for purpose these days, and usually doesn’t help you with your journey’s purpose.
A good sign should have medium AND long distance targets on it.
So, for example, if I was in Streatham, a street sign for a road heading south-west could have, for example, Tooting & Wimbledon as a medium distance journey targets, and maybe the A3 as a major radial target, and M25 for people trying to escape London. This works because people will know something about their journey aims – Get Out Of London In A Generally Useful Direction being a common one for Londoners.
Thanks to Chris for an excellent article.
Interestingly there is much more thought and rigour put into signing for cyclists than for motorists these days. The Cycle Superhighways are all signed to a select range of destinations, always including a nearby destination and the end of the route. Added to this the new Quietways will have a similar signing strategy, leading to (perhaps) a unified wayfinding and signing strategy throughout London. Of course, there are thousands of existing signs from the last 30 years which may or may not be correct, and may or may not be replaced.
For the poor benighted motorist, I agree with previous commenters that M25 in a blue patch would be a helpful shorthand for “Out of London” for most arterial roads and town centres.
The number of named junctions throughout London is another confusing factor, and very few people (even those who Ought To Know) actually know the location of Waterworks, Charlie Browns, the two Henlys Corners (!), Apex Corner vs. Apex Junction, etc. etc. Not sure there is an easy solution for that, except perhaps junction numbering on the main arterials and orbitals.
@RayL
“any reason why ‘circle with arrowhead’ symbols are not used?”
I think I can answer you question: it is used, and it signifies “roundabout”, showing the correct direction for the country of driving.
It’s the same reason arrows aren’t used for compass points, they are already used to mean “in this direction” on all road signs.
http://www.easypacelearning.com/images/roadsigns.jpg
You don’t want to be travelling a road to see a sign showing a up-pointing arrow and not know if it means “directly ahead” or “north” when travelling in a south-eastern direction.
Apropos of the Inner Ring Road, here’s part of what the Great Danish Encyclopedia has to say about road traffic in London:
(Italicized parts translated from Danish). The only thing that answers remotely to the latter description seems to be the Inner Ring Road, but I’ve never seen that being referred to as “The Motor Box” outside that one encyclopedia article. Was it ever known by that name, or is it just a random mistake (or possibly a copyright trap)?
Henning Makholm
The original idea was to have three motorway boxes around London.
The M25 was to be the the middle of the three but was then the only one built.
The outer box would have helped move traffic between towns away from London. Some roads have been improved.
The north & south circular inner ring roads were left to cope. The northern route has been much improved but the southern route is nothing more than a collection of signs (and bad ones at that).
The “motorway box”, also known as the West/North/East/South Cross routes was a plan for a ring running very close to where the orbital route of the Overground now runs – indeed alongside it or, if Beeching had had his way, maybe instead of it. Parts of the West and East Cross routes were actually built –
– from Shepherds Bush to White City (formerly the M41, now the A3220)
– from Hackney Wick to Poplar (Blackwall Tunnel Northern approach, formerly the A102(M), now the A12)
– from North Greenwich to Kidbrooke (Blackwall Tunnel Southern approach, formerly the A102(M), now the A12)
It is perhaps just as well that the bits ploughing through pre-gentrification Islington and Brixton were canned, but traces of future proofing can be seen
at Hackney Wick
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5482373,-0.0279989,3a,75y,278.46h,85.36t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKmnoCmiSE3VGNDZ85tQKHw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5436934,-0.0299532,3a,75y,305.07h,91.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxP1y9ueEH4AfJDI7ugh6NQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
and at White City https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5159511,-0.2203725,3a,75y,308.76h,76.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEPxvFJ-1CE1aRZiPVUOOmA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
and even Brixton if you know what you’re looking for
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4629004,-0.1071976,3a,75y,246.83h,95.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sw59n0reyYILDaP4K8Eerxg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
(The monolithic structure and tiny windows were to keep the sound out – a similar concept was used for the better-known Byker Wall in Newcastle )
@Chris L
“The original idea was to have three motorway boxes around London.
The M25 was to be the the middle of the three but was then the only one built.”
Actually there were FOUR ringways planned. The M25 is part of the outer two joined together by the pragmatic PM Thatcher. That’s why there are two very strange bits on the M25 where it suddenly dives outwards between Potters Bar and Watford and why you have to “turn off” the M25 to stay on the M25 where it meets the M26.
Don’t belive me? Check out M25 J26 on Google Maps!
Ringway 2 is now the North Circular north of the river.
It’s J25 J19 that shows where Ringway 3 was going to. Sorry finger issues.
@Reynolds 953
Any expertise of rat runs, how to deal with them, not deal with or even encourage them seems to be kept behind closed doors. I think the roads where I live are typical of inner London, in that one-way streets, no right turns, etc. have defined traffic patterns and rat-runs for years. When residents campaign to change things you get get a very mother-knows-best response, an “ooh! Too difficult to fix, that one!” or “that’s the way its always been”. One the one hand I guess it is a complex issue, that has to balance traffic flow, sharing the burden versus nice quiet residential streets and/or thundering main roads. On the other hand you can’t help but feel that local planning attitudes, fear, lack of joined up planning between competing authorites, resistance to change or just plain old laziness are entrenching problems.
A more general comment: Looking at the bottom left corner of the MoT map from way back you can see where they decided to extend South Circular the the West and it and the A3 become one and the same for a bit through Wandsworth. A some point, possibly by design or by evolution, or a mixture of both (if anyone knows?) Wandsworth town centre became a massive gyratory and Wandsworth council is only just getting around to talking about how to re-route the traffic through the place in a less brutal way. The road signs around Wandsworth one-way system are less about direction to your destination and much more about the heart stopping, fearsome challenge of getting in the right lane.
There’s a nice map on Wikipedia (by DavidCane) showing the planned and built Ringways all in one diagram.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/London_Ringways_Plan.png
Great article. Thank you.
It is of interest that Charing Cross is also used by TfL as a centre point (centroid?) for London’s zonal fares system.
Here for example (with permission from Roger Blake) is an historic response from TfL in March 2010 to a request for rezoning Stamford Hill station as a Zone 2/3 boundary stop rather than being in Zone 3.
“You will probably recall that we discussed the issue of the zoning of Stamford Hill station at the Greater Anglia refranchising stakeholder event held on 12th March. Hackney council and local users have expressed a desire to see the station turned into a boundary station covering both zones 2 and 3 (currently the station is wholly in zone 3), citing the fact that other stations in the vicinity of Stamford Hill hold a similar status (Manor House and Clapton).
“TfL has reviewed the distance between Stamford Hill and other stations in the same area and central London (Charing Cross to be precise)[my emphasis]. The results were as follows:
• Stoke Newington (Zone 2) – 4.5 miles
• Manor House (Zone 2/3) – 4.5 miles
• Clapton (Zone 2/3) – 4.8 miles
• Harringay Green Lanes (Zone 3) – 4.9 miles
• Stamford Hill (Zone 3) – 5.0 miles
“Stamford Hill is further from central London than the other boundary zone 2/3 stations so TfL is minded not to change the current zoning of the station.
The local illogicality is that many Stamford Hill rail users go only to the City (just 3.9 miles in a straight line to Liverpool Street buffer stops), then walk, not to the West End (eg Charing Cross) which is however stated by TfL as its distance yardstick.
Going to the West End, many Stamford Hill residents get a 253/254 bus to Manor House and catch the Piccadilly, a much longer journey than to the City but only requiring a Zone 2 + Zone 1 fare to reach Charing Cross (or King Charles I’s feet) at 5.0 straight line miles from Stamford Hill station entrance. (I think the tube station entrance is actually 5.0 and the King’s feet are at 5.1 miles, but who cares about such minutiae.)
Stamford Hill is also a relatively underused station compared to its neighbour Stoke Newington, arguably in part because of the fares structure being dependent on something approximate to the 17th Century King’s feet being the 21st Century basis for Londoners’ starting point for zonal boundaries!
So there may still be a case to made about Stamford Hill’s zoning. Clearly King Charles has a lot to explain. Off with his head, I hear you say…
@Jonathan Roberts
Thank you so much – more grist to my own mill. My local station is exactly 10 miles from Charing Cross as the crow flies (using the “draw circles on Google maps” app). The ten-mile radius circle runs mainly through Zones 4 and 5, but one station within that ten mile radius is in Zone 6. Just one. Mine.
How do I get TfL/my local TOC to recognise this injustice?
The TOC say it wouldn’t be fair to re-zone it because they would “have” to put the fares up somewhere else – as if there were some law which says that the amount of injustice in the system has to be conserved!
@JohnnyBrolly – in fairness to the boroughs, even when roads are closed with residential support, there always seems to be acrimonious opposition (certainly in terms of volume, which isn’t always the same as numbers…).
Without reference to the specifics of the schemes themselves, there were a lot of arguments about the Waltham Forest mini-Holland scheme, I think there is currently a lot of flak flying about road closures in Croydon at the moment, same goes for Enfield mini-Holland as well.
There may be issues about how effective their consultation and communications have been, but some boroughs seem to have been been willing to at least trial closures and have had officers and councillors brave enough to champion them.
I won’t name the borough, but in my own ward I’ve found the councillors are primarily interested in the convenience of drivers and the concept of road closures is met by blank incomprehension by an old school traffic engineer who considers his raison d’être the free movement of motor vehicles.
I’m not convinced that the comment “This sign on Lordship Lane in Dulwich is a modern attempt to copy the design of a Through Routes sign, complete with semi-circular top panel” holds true
The route sign is quite a lot smaller than the semi-circular top panel. That may be a legacy from early signage, but I don’t think the two signs are really linked
Re Stuart,
The Lordship lane sign – The original bigger through road sign there was replaced just 5-10 years ago when Southwark replaced a whole batch but the top part wasn’t replaced. The lower bracket position for the original through roads sign can still be seen as they haven’t painted the lamp post after removing it..
Reynolds 953 @ 18 September 2015, 17:00
What’s a “mini-Holland” scheme?
@ timbeau
18 September 2015 at 16:53
Assuming that the 11th letter of the alphabet is relevant, then you are indeed 10 miles from Charing X/King Charles’ feet, according to a different computerised mapping system which I use!
Your own station is not the only problem – if it is a problem. The reality is that SWT or even its BR SW division predecessor drove a hard bargain when the SW stations were zoned – during which ownership/operating period was all that?
The result was that many SW outer London stations are in one zone greater than much of the rest of London’s suburbs. Yours ought arguably ought to be in Zone 5 – the Croydons are only 5 for example (West Croy 9.0 miles, East Croy 9.3 miles from the King’s feet), for a comparable distance with much more frequent and faster services. No wonder SWT is more profitable than some other TOCs, with higher fares for large outer suburb passenger volumes! But it is a harsh world, and TfL or LRT did the deals they could at the time the initial zones were set up. Overall I should argue that Londoners are better off with a Zonal system than not, whatever the local injustices – and this is also to oversimplify how the zones originated, which probably deserves to be a separate LRC article.
So should the Mayor now seek to rebalance the zonal boundaries? Politically that might be nice and voter appealing (2016 is close at hand). Overall it might not amount to much difference across London in aggregate. Walthamstow Writer can probably describe in more care and detail how overall fares baskets might be able to be redistributed without too much grief. Nevertheless the strategic risk to TfL is that some fares would come down, and that no fares would go up, and therefore TfL would experience a small revenue loss overall. Which could be critical in a situation when people are expecting resource reduction (= operating expenditure grant reductions) in the 25th November Comprehensive Spending Review.
So I’m not saying that you don’t have a case, but that case would need to be presented and assimilated in a wider context! Perhaps you might argue for a move to a boundary station, less disruptive to some flows and beneficial to others, and possibly stimulating new passenger volumes? Is the passenger demand mature, or immature and susceptible to such stimulus?
The A406 no longer continues to Woolwich Ferry. It is now the A1020/A117… The A406 now ends at the A13 junction…
@timbeau: The blackwall tunnel southern approach is now the A102, not A12… Unless it changed since last Sunday…
Malcolm
…. drivers who are not using a satnav
Digression, may be relevant.
AIUI, the Driving test is soon likely to include sat-nav use as a testable component.
Suppose the test car does not have satnav & the testee never uses it, because they don’t trust the damned things?
Could be fun.
Chris H
And, of course, many junctions in London are named after the Pub that stands (or used to stand) there – this is also seen in bus-route indications.
R953
That spat is on-going, but it seems, according to some “Cycling Campaigners” that the local closures, which can affect disabled people badly ( their taxis can’t cope) are “part of the price” & the disabled can get stuffed – which has led to even more bad feeling & heat & less light.
Fun times.
Oops, missed it …
Briantist …
And, of course, if we were ever to have an “orbital rail” line, for passenger transfer & freight avoidance, it would be close to, but probably a little further out than Ringway 4 ( ?? )
@Jonathan Roberts
Interesting that you say TfL said
“• Stoke Newington (Zone 2) – 4.5 miles
• Manor House (Zone 2/3) – 4.5 miles
• Clapton (Zone 2/3) – 4.8 miles
• Harringay Green Lanes (Zone 3) – 4.9 miles
• Stamford Hill (Zone 3) – 5.0 miles
“Stamford Hill is further from central London than the other boundary zone 2/3 stations so TfL is minded not to change the current zoning of the station.”
I’ve just fired up Google Maps’s “measure distance tool” (in straight line mode from 51.507511,-0.127774 ) and I make the three Stratford stations to be:
Stratford International 9.22km – 5.73 miles
Stratford 9.41km – 5.85 miles
Stratford High Street 9.41km – 5.85 miles
And they are moving to the Zone 2/3 boundary from Zone 3 at the turn of the year. [1]
Perhaps time for Stamford Hill to ask for a recount?
[1] http://www.itv.com/news/london/update/2014-07-21/tfl-to-re-zone-stratford-stations/
@Reynolds 953
Whoever told the residents that they can’t close a road because it is an A road is telling a big, fat lie. They ought to know that a road can be declassified by the local council’s highways department (not including trunk routes managed by TfL or Highways England) at any time, if there is a good reason for doing so.
A good example of this is Orpington High Street, which until the mid 1990s was classified as the A223 (albeit separated from its northern half in Bexley by an earlier declassification of the route through St Mary Cray village in the early 80s, presumably to encourage traffic to use the parallel A224 Cray Avenue/Sevenoaks Way instead). As part of a botched scheme to make the High Street more ‘pedestrian friendly’ by closing it to all through traffic (except buses) during daytime, the road was declassified and through traffic diverted onto Spur Road and Court Road. Despite the scheme being rapidly abandoned within 18 months (due to pressure from shopkeepers…..the accompanying removal of on-street parking as part of the scheme led to a huge collapse in shop footfall), the road remains unclassified to this day, leaving a short, isolated stump of A223 between Orpington and Green St Green, several miles away from the rest of it!
I also recall that in the late fifties/early sixties there was a half-hearted attempt to recognise the first E road numbering system by indicating major UK E route destinations in green boxes. No attempt of course to use the E route numbers, totally in-British!
E routes are the cross-Europe road route designation system.
I have a related question……what are the current guidelines for deciding which destinations go onto a sign at any particular point on a route? To me, it has always struck me as rather arbitrary, bordering on plain illogical. Take the A232 eastbound from Croydon, for example…..it is commonly used to travel to Orpington (where the numbered route ends), yet for some bizarre reason Sevenoaks is listed as the primary eastbound destination. This is despite the fact that it is far quicker to go south and then by the M25 to reach Sevenoaks than it is via this signposted route!
Looking at the MoT diagram above, I’m beginning to wonder if the slightly arbitrary choices made at this time are the reason for this inconsistency. For example, why are both Sevenoaks and Hastings listed as primary destinations for the A21, and not, for example, Tonbridge and Sevenoaks, or even just Hastings alone? Furthermore, why is Newmarket a primary destination for the A11, and not Norwich (which is the larger, more important city at the end of this route), or even just ‘East Anglia’? It can’t just be to save space (e.g. two destinations for A21 and several other arterial routes), or due to their relative proximity/size (otherwise why not list Watford along with Aylesbury for the A41 in the above diagram, given that Watford is much larger, more important destination compared to Sevenoaks?).
@T Stock: I have, in the past, seen E designations numbers in the UK on the yellow description panels used by the Highways Agency to indicate the purpose of roadworks. I suspect it was on the E20 (M62).
Also, I think the “E” designation is an international one, rather than a Europe one. The E121 leads to Iran and the E30 passes through Moscow for example
I know this is a little off topic but you might want to have a read of this
http://pathetic.org.uk/features/numbering/
Its about the numbering of the Motorways and the interesting goings on when trying to sort it out.
@Anonymously
The answer to your question is here: List of primary destinations on the United Kingdom road network – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
@Chris H…..I think junctions have been given names to make it easier to pinpoint the location of incidents for emergency services, as well as traffic problems on radio broadcasts etc, since at least locally they are reasonably well known and memorable (e.g. Apex Corner instead of A1/A41/A5109 roundabout!).
@Jonathan Roberts
I would be really interested in some background to the zones. It seems like its something which has been copied in other areas.. I dont know if its something started in London or anywhere else.
When a stretch of Watling Street was ‘de-trunked’ some years back, the number of the section between St Albans and Junction 9 of the M1 changed. Then it changed back, resulting in signs along the stretch stating “A5 – Was A5” :O
Another issue in the clockwise / widdershins issue is that overhead signs will use road numbers and not names, which are meaningless unless you know them. “A5 blocked after A205” on a northbound sign at Scratchwood doesn’t tell you *where* the blockage might be (usually meaning that by the time you might get there it will be cleared anyway!)
And the use of disappeared landmarks as indicators of location targets is mostly pointless now. Each time I pass “Henly’s Corner” on the A1/A405 I note how I’m actually driving across the former forecourt.
ps. I am one of those who refuse to get a satnav (cost, errors, and people should _know_ how to read a *map* dammit!)
Oh, on measuring distances to London, in the past it has been alleged that the Romans measured distances from Londinium to the ‘London Stone’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone#16th_century
Anonymously@2051
“This is despite the fact that it is far quicker to go south and then by the M25 to reach Sevenoaks than it is via this signposted route!”
Surely road sings must be for all road users, including those not permitted on motorways. You could, however, help those who are permitted by showing an alternative route as I have sometimes seen when there are height or weight restrictions and an avoiding route is also shown.
@AlisonW
Fascinating, thank you.
@Briantist
“Also, I think the “E” designation is an international one, rather than a Europe one. The E121 leads to Iran and the E30 passes through Moscow for example”
Moscow is in Europe. The E designations were devised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and cover all European countries, including the whole of Turkey and the former Soviet Union, although parts of those countries are/were in Asia.
http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/conventn/MapAGR2007.pdf
The E121 does indeed end at the Turkmenistan/Iran border
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/E-roads-Turkey.png
A friend elsewhere just pointed out to me that The Guardian had a very relevant article today on road signs[1] related to an upcoming exhibition celebrating 50 years of British roadsigns [2] …
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/sep/18/way-to-go-the-woman-who-invented-britains-road-signs
[2] https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/future-exhibitions/50-years-of-british-road-signs
@Jonathan Roberts
indeed, a King about six or seven hundred years before Charles Stuart is involved.
” The reality is that SWT or even its BR SW division predecessor drove a hard bargain when the SW stations were zoned – during which ownership/operating period was all that?”
The zones were extended to British Rail in 1985, and Zone 5 was split into Zones 5 and 6 in 1991. So Stagecoach were handed the fare structure on a plate when they took over the franchise in 1996.
The ten mile radius from Charing Cross is typically in Zone 4 – sometimes Zone 5. No other station at that distance is in Zone 6.
@Anonymous
“What’s a “mini-Holland” scheme?”
The GLA has offered funding for some local council projects to improve provision for cyclists. Any idea that the result will make cycling as much a part of the basic warp and weft of the townscape as it is in Holland is rather over-stating the case. This is Kingston’s proposal http://www.kingstonguardian.co.uk/resources/images/3952076/
– delayed, ironically, so that the requisite roadworks wouldn’t interrupt the London- Surrey cycle race last month.
@AlisonW
Regarding Henlys Corner – I’ve often walked past there going from central London to Whetstone. Looking at Wikipedia, it should probably be Henley’s Corner. My interpretation was that it was a corruption of something Welsh – Henllys = Old Court.
Not so daft – Hainault is half Welsh. It looks like it might be derived from Henallt = old wood. It actually means ‘wood belonging to a religious community’.
@ Anonymous 17:57 : the “mini Holland” schemes are projects funded by TfL in 3 outer boroughs (Enfield, Kingston, Waltham Forest) and are meant to implement examples of “Dutch style” road infrastructure to provide better facilities for cyclists and pedestrians.
Unlike the cycle superhighways designed for commuting into the centre, the mini-Holland schemes are intended to address local roads.
A feature of road network design in the Netherlands is they try to prevent through traffic in residential areas and limit traffic for access only. The mini-Holland schemes (in Waltham Forest anyway) are also trying to achieve this through road closures and these have been somewhat controversial.
London Reconnections had a series of articles on London cycle schemes earlier this year and there is more information and discussion in these.
Ian Sergeant
More prosaically,wasn’t Henly’s Corner named after the Jaguar dealer (Henly’s) which used to be based there?
@James Bunting…..But a quick Google Maps search will show that it is still quicker to travel from Croydon to Sevenoaks by heading southeast instead of via the A232, even with the Avoid Motorways option ticked! Besides, how many cyclists/invalid carriages/mopeds/low power motorcycles/agricultural vehicles/learner drivers are there who need to make this trip?
Before the M25, I suspect that the A232 carried a lot more medium and long distance east-west traffic than it does now, and in that respect it was important to signpost Sevenoaks as an important traffic waypoint (where the A21 and A25 intersected). But now it has effectively been bypassed by the M25/M26 and A21, I don’t see why it should be a more important traffic destination than, say, Orpington (at least within Greater London) when signposting destinations.
@Slugabed – Yes indeed, I recall the fuss when the establishment closed.
I agree strongly about the inadequacy of ordinary street naming, and its effect on navigation. In addition to the names being inconsistently and poorly placed, there are many instances when one comes from a minor road to a main-ish road, where only the side road is named at the junction. This is a big problem when cycling ‘cross country’ in unfamiliar parts. You can’t keep a map on your lap on a bike.
Regarding Ringway 1 and the destruction it would have wrought, how satisfying it is to see on the map that the much of the route has turned out to be served in a more civilised manner by the inner orbital sections of the London Overground, over which the motorway would have been built. As part of the 60’s grand plan, Brixton was to have had a unique 5-level road/rail interchange, where a Green Line coach stop was planned directly on the Ringway, linking to a two-level BR station below this, a bus station at ground level, and the yet to be built Tube terminus – all topped off with a ‘destination’ cafe on a 6th level spanning over the motorway.
Back on the signage, there is a vestige of the old system where a modern green sign on the A23 in Brixton optimistically indicates a mere 49 miles to Brighton. Showing the milage does seem unusual for inner London signage. As for the proximity of the destination, in terms of travel time, it may as well be pointing to Alpha Centuri.
@NickBXN
“Regarding Ringway 1 and the destruction it would have wrought, how satisfying it is to see on the map that the much of the route has turned out to be served in a more civilised manner by the inner orbital sections of the London Overground, over which the motorway would have been built. ”
Can I suggest that there are two minor issue with that? Firstly almost half of Ringway 1 was built, in so much as the West Cross Route (aka Westway A40 and A3220) East Cross Routes (A12/A103/A2) are there.
The second is that the London Overground lines and stations date back to the years before the Railway Mania (1840s) decade? If anything Ringway 1 was following the North London Line?
timbeau
Also “helped” (cough) by some councils’ & some “campaigners” perceptions that the only way to “help” cyclists is by buggering-up all motorists, even the ones who live in the same roads. Oh dear.
The Dutch idea of “Woonerf” seems to have passed them by, unfortunately, even though there are small examples in London …
See also R953.
@Alison W
Thank you for the informative insight about the London Stone. A road mileage starting point is very plausible, even if the Romans didn’t have a Zero!
@ David T-Rex
“I would be really interested in some background to the zones. It seems like its something which has been copied in other areas.. I don’t know if it’s something started in London or anywhere else.”
As I suggested above in reply to timbeau, it would probably be useful to research and publish in LRC a more detailed article on the whole scheme.
I recall that the Paris ‘Carte Orange’ zonal scheme preceded London’s, for example. That may have been a strong stimulus for our system, while there may be other precedents elsewhere. I don’t know if Paris adopted a centre point to define the zones. Clearly the Boulevard Peripherique/former Paris walls/Ville de Paris administration area was an obvious location for one zonal boundary.
In London, arguably the LCC ‘A’ ring, and ‘Central London’ planning policies stimulated by that road geography, have subsequently helped to define part of London’s Central Zone/Zone 1 (hurray, back on topic!). However instead of a tight inner boundary running from say Paddington to South Kensington, the Circle Line has caused a wider western enclosure including large residential areas east of the Circle Line.
London Transport began to think about simplified fares structures for buses and tubes in the late 1970s. There are policy papers and revenue assessment analyses from that period, as the strategy and detail needed to be discussed and reviewed with the GLC and the London Transport Passengers Committee watchdog, and to secure GLC revenue agreement and political approval. The initial work preceded Ken Livingstone’s ‘Fares Fair’ policy, though he clearly adopted the strategy wholesale.
It took quite a few iterations over a number of years to achieve the rail zonal structure we now have plus flat fares on the buses. The reference to Charing Cross as a centre point appears to have emerged only AFTER the creation of some zones – the initial rail-based system featured separate West End and City zones with an overlap which can be described as crudely along the Kings X-Euston-Kingsway-Waterloo-Elephant N-S axis. The parallel event of London SR termini fares differentials being merged into a single consolidated London SR fare, should also be considered.
@Briantist
18 September 2015 at 21:03
The Department for Transport consulted on changes to the organisation of the primary route network (PRN) and the system of roads classification in England, in February-April 2011. A decision was published in December 2011.
The Department would decentralise responsibility for the PRN and classification, to be in force from April 2012. The Department also defined clearer requirements for local authorities to agree changes with their neighbours, if the road in question crosses into another county/unitary authority. The DfT reserved its position on funding for routes of strategic national importance (RSNIs). The SRN (Strategic Road Network) would be kept at its present size for the time being.
In the context of the headline destinations shown on road signs, the DfT would still control the ‘primary destination list’. It reviewed some destinations as possible extensions of the PRN but largely rejected those as close to another primary destination. DfT also responded to suggestions for the PRN to reach consistently all areas down to 25-30,000 population clusters – the destination list is highly variable between 30,000 and 50,000 population as to which are included and which aren’t. In para 2.10 of the DfT’s response, it decided not to proceed at the present time with a radical overhaul of primary destinations. However that and a previous response to consultation about Strategic National Corridors showed that there might be a future opportunity to redefine the primary destination list.
NickBXN says “You can’t keep a map on your lap on a bike”.
Nor can you when driving any other vehicle (except perhaps some motorised wheelchairs). At least a cyclist can pause very close to the junction to consult a map. The satnav, when properly used, can contribute usefully to road safety.
Henlys corner: yes there was a car dealer there called Henlys, Wikpedia suggests a Jaguar and Rover dealer. At 9 years old I accompanied my father on a car-buying trip round the area; we called at Henlys, but were snootily told “We don’t deal in pre-war cars”. We finished up with a 1938 Lanchester, with enough headroom for my father to keep his hat on when driving.
Some councils might bother to take down signs. Others leave them in place, even though “newer” (but still 50+ year old) roads have rendered them long obsolete. See this one in what’s now a quiet, nondescript side street in suburban Carshalton Beeches: http://tinyurl.com/pkbpgrd
Traffic now follows the B271 through Benyon Rd. and hangs a left up the B278.
(I know that’s a bit off-topic, but the fact that sign’s still there has always amazed me. They even replace the bulb when it goes out.)
Re: Primary destinations
Have these changed over time? In the early 70s prog rock band “Hatfield & the North” took their name from road signs in North London. It wouldn’t have been the same if they were “Stevenage & the North”
@Anon 11:16
Well they could have become ‘Steve and the North’! The destinations must have changed over time, but I don’t know the extent. Someone may know. As probable examples, think of the NEC, the Chunnel, and Luton and Stansted Airports. Some research is indicated.
Malcolm: Motorcycles can have a map case – with clear plastic – affixed over the petrol tank. Works very well.
Alison”: Motorcycle map case – that’s interesting. Is there a safety issue there though? (Come to think I have seen people “doing the knowledge” on mopeds with something similar).
@Ian Sergeant – I’m afraid any suggestion of Welsh connexions with Henleys Corner and Hainault is simply untrue. Henleys Corner (note extra “e”) is named after the Henley Group’s garage there; the Henley Group was founded by Gordon Henley in 1947… Nothing to do with Henllys, I fear (which would mean Old Court in Welsh). Hainault certainly means wood owned by a religious community but both elements of the toponym are Saxon not Welsh. [There are – at best – no more than about three or four Old Welsh toponyms in the whole of SE Britain, river names apart].
@Jonathan Roberts – I had always understood that distance from Charing Cross meant just that (the cross being the Eleanor Cross, now sited outside Charing cross, but moved from the junction with Northumberland Avenue) .
@Chris L /Briantist -and there was to be another “outer M25”, too. I recall studying carefully the maps on the wall of one of my Highways colleagues. To the south of London, this would have passed between what is now the M25 and the M27. Its western ghost survives in that curious bit of motorway, the A329(M) and the Blackwater valley route. Even Mrs T realised the bellow of outrage that would arise from her supporters if the engineers attempted to link them… let alone the riots that would ensue if they were extended further.
@Graham H
Can I refer you to the excellent diagram from Wikipedia?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/London_Ringways_Plan.png
There would indeed have been another motorway “outside” the M25 in North London, at least as far as Potters Bar. In fact, a very tiny stretch of it exists. The village of Hoddesdon has a mile of it coming off the A10.
In South London there would have been THREE motoways inside the M25: Ringway 3 from Swanley via Purley, Chessington, “inside” Heathrow and round to Potter’s Bar. The map explains much better than I can.
@Greg Tingey
“for passenger transfer & freight avoidance, it would be close to, but probably a little further out than Ringway 4 ( ?? )”
I tried to reply and the crayon alert went off!
@timbeau
I think I probably mean that the “E” signs are nothing to do with the EU, rather than “Europe”.
My memory confirms the “e” in Henleys. The Wikipedia article insists on removing the “e”, even though admitting that the garage was founded by somebody called Henley with-an-e. I suspect that someone has put two and two together and come up with the customary answer of 42.
In fairness to Ian, he did only speculate. His speculation turns out to be unfounded, rather than untrue (maybe a nit-picking distinction, but…)
Briantist says “I think I probably mean that the “E” signs are nothing to do with the EU, rather than “Europe”.
Fair enough, but I don’t recall anyone ever suggesting that they were anything to do with the EU. If anyone did, a quick look at the calendar would have disabused them.
@GrahamH – that map, almost certainly, belonged to a lobbying group. The only places, as someone who rummages around in archives looking for road plans, I’ve ever seen something like that is pro-road building group the ABD’s desire to see an outer orbital and pro-bus (I would say anti-road building, though its true, because their funding is entirely from bus companies, rather than environmental groups like CPRE, FoE, etc) Transport 2000 (now the Campaign for Better Transport) fears on seeing a load of partially orbital roads whose aim was to serve local traffic and provide partial relief of the M25, and thinking “overall plan”.
The A329(M) is part of an earlier (70s) M31 scheme, that was designed to take traffic off the Heathrow section of the M25. Beginning at the M25/A3 junction it would have passed through Woking to M3 J3, before passing via the south of Bracknell, taking in the A329(M), and ending in Central Reading on the Inner Ring Road. Not so much orbital as tangential. The bit that was built, was built as a bypass for Wokingham, and Reading’s western suburbs.
The A404, Blackwater Valley route, etc were proposed in the 1989 Orbit study (and probably before) to relieve shot bits of the M25 by providing an alternative route that helped distribute traffic between radials without using the M25. The A312 dual carriageway in West London is part of this. The A404 link took the dual carriageway Marlow bypass and the rump bit of the motorway Maidenhead bypass and filled in the missing third as a really obvious thing.
The Luton/Dunstable bypass and across to Stansted and Colchester that the ABD tweaked and T2k feared was part of nefarious plot was part of the Oxford-East Coast Ports route proposed by Roads to Prosperity. The bit between Luton and Stansted was replaced by the Milton Keynes – Bedford – Cambridge trunk road, the bit west of the A5 abandoned with the collapse of the Wing bypass.
Re: E Roads.
In 1950 the following routes were E roads radiating from London:
A4-A30 towards Southampton (E1), A20 towards Dover (E2 and E5), A12 towards Harwich (E8) and A1-A6-A5 towards Northampton en route to Glasgow via Scotch Corner.
In 1968, after a massive expansion of the UK network, the following routes were E roads radiating from London:
A4-A30 towards Southampton (E1), A20 towards Dover (E2 and E5), A12 towards Harwich (E8) and A1 towards Doncaster en route to Glasgow via Edinburgh (E31), M1 towards Birmingham en route to Glasgow via Preston (E33), M4 towards Cardiff en route to Fishguard (E105), A13 towards Tilbury (E107) and A127 towards Southend (E108).
In 1983, after the grid proposals from 1975 were enacted, the following routes were E roads radiating from London:
M1 towards Leicester en route to Doncaster (E13), A1 towards Doncaster en route to Inverness (E15), M20 towards Dover (E15), M4 towards Cardiff en route to Fishguard (E30) and the A12 towards Felixstowe (E30).
@Jonathan Roberts (11.25)
A case in point is the Channel Tunnel….I distinctly remember it bumping Folkestone off the primary destination list on the A20/M20 in the 90s. Given that they are virtually next to each other, and that there are no longer any ferry services from Folkestone, it strikes me as an appropriate change. More appropriate than, say, the sudden appearance of Biggin Hill Airport on the A232 signs (last time I checked, it was a minor, private airport with no scheduled flights).
@Graham H:
I agree that the motorway you are referring to is the fabled M31 (brilliantly detailed on the Pathetic Motorways website, and explaining why the M4/A329(M) junction is ridiculously over-engineered!), which would have considerably shortened the distance and travelling time from the southern M25 to the M4 (a SW equivalent of the M26, I guess), and possibly reduce the later widening of the M25 that was later required between junctions 12-15 (although I could easily be wrong!). Despite its absence, the putative M31 corridor (A322/A329 through Bracknell from M3 J3) is still heavily used as a shortcut to get to the M4…I used to use it myself when I was living and working in Reading. You’re absolutely right that there would have been a near-revolution in the Home Counties if this plan had gone ahead, but today I wonder if the residents of Bracknell might wish that so much traffic didn’t plough its way through the town….
Si at 13:33: thanks for that interesting, and authoritative-sounding, information.
You refer to “tangential” roads. These seem very popular around Paris, and I often wonder if such things would have been more suitable for London than the squashed circle we have finished up with. After all, a circle has the distinction of not being the shortest route between any pair of its points.
The M26 may be the only tangential near-London new road, though one could also mention the (now renumbered) M10, or perhaps the A404 you mention, or how about A130? Mostly, though, journeys past London have two awkward right-angled bends on and off the M25.
@ALL
I forgot to mention this rather great website – Pathetic Motorways – Ringways
– this link takes you to their Ringways pages.
@Jonathan Roberts (at 10:11)
Thanks for the information. I recall there was considerable consternation on the South Coast when the A23/A27 upgrades happened and the signs said “Brighton” when the city is called “Brighton and Hove”. Still, corrections were made!
Anonymously: Biggin Hill is indeed a private airport, but I suspect the users whose chauffeurs had difficulty finding it may have lines of influence which are more powerful than yours and mine.
It does also host the Biggin Hill air show.
@Henning Makholm
“A number of large arterials, of which several motorways, lead the traffic towards the central areas and are distributed by two ring roads, an outer one 7-15 km from the centre, and an inner one, “The Motor Box”, 3-4 km from the centre.”
I just re-read http://pathetic.org.uk/features/ringways/ringway_1/ and your “Motorway Box” is there as a “Sunday name” for Ringway 1.
Briantist, I stand corrected about Ringway 1 not being planned to be built over the North/South London lines… in as much as it would have been substantially alongside them (give or take cuttings and underpasses here and there), as very well described in the link below. My reference to the Overground was an attempt to shortcut saying N/S London lines where they now form the inner orbital ring.
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/ringways/ringway1/north.shtml
It would only have decked over Brixton station – this link below actually has an illustration of the cafe over the motorway. Quite a vision!
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/ringways/ringway1/south.shtml
It therefore substantially followed what is now the Overground ring westwards from Peckham all the way around to Dalston, which is a fair proportion of shared route – much of it spared the blight that the North & South Cross routes would have brought.
A further thought on signage around London, and the difficulties of navigation at times, is that we are blessed with such good public transport signage. The stations and even bus stops actually do the job of telling road users where they are, rather than traffic signs announcing localities such as in the Sydenham photo. For wayfinding around town, there used to be the benefit of following buses that showed the intermediate route points on the rear blind. It may not have been the fastest way, but it was always reassuring when in doubt. There is then the added benefit of transport geekery: when one is a bit lost, the sight of a railway bridge is usually good news, and catching sight any rolling stock happening to pass over often helps to pinpoint things further.
@NickXBN
“For wayfinding around town, there used to be the benefit of following buses that showed the intermediate route points on the rear blind.”
The intermediate points are rather unhelpful though, because on avareage half of them are behind you. Comparing the “ultimate” destination blinds of approaching buses and those travelling in the same direction can be useful though, although some circuitous routes can be confusing and some destinations are less than helpful (anyone know where “Mansfield Park” might be? “Angel Road superstores”?)
The M25 is actually cobbled together from parts of the Ringway 3 and Ringway 4 proposals, hence the awkward bulge around Watford and the strange layout of the junction at Chevening. Ringway 3 is used by the M25 from Swanley to South Mimms, where the wide carriageway separation gives away that what was built was originally intended as a slip road off the main route which was to have passed south of Watford, east of Heathrow an d past Chessington and Purley back to Swanley. Ringway 4 was an incomplete circle starting at Canvey, via Chelmsford (built as the A130), then through Herts, usiang the “North Orbital” A405/A414 to Kings Langley, then on the M25 as built via Chevening and the M26 to Wrotham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringway_4#/media/File:London_Ringway_4_1960s_Plan.png
@Briantist
“” If anything Ringway 1 was following the North London Line”
Isn’t that what Nick said – the motorway would have been built over (or alongside) the existing railways – which at the time were primarily freight routes with, at best, a little-known and neglected passenger service over some sections.
“Can I suggest that there are two minor issue with that? Firstly almost half of Ringway 1 was built, in so much as the West Cross Route (aka Westway A40 and A3220) East Cross Routes (A12/A102/A2) are there.
The Westway was a radial route, not part of the WXR or NXR – as study of the junction layout at White City will make apparent. Only about a mile of the WXR was built – its full length would have been from Battersea to Harlesden. And the oblong shape of London means that the NXR and SXR, none of which were built, would have made up more than half the total length. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Cross_Route#/media/File:London_Motorway_Box_1960s_Plan.png
the modern spelling of Hainault is a fanciful Victorian back-formation to associate it with Phillippa of Hainault, the consort of Edward III, who came from the province – now part of Belgium – which takes its name from the River Haine. (Haine-eau).
The Essex town’s name is derived from the Saxon higna = religious community – cf the Inns of Court and holt = wood,
The wood in this case belonged to Barking Abbey
@Malcolm
In fairness to Ian, he did only speculate. His speculation turns out to be unfounded, rather than untrue.
Precisely. A case of my mind putting two and two together and making five.
@Anonymous 11:16
In the early 70s prog rock band “Hatfield & the North” took their name from road signs in North London.
Allegedly. I asked Chris Marshall about this years ago, as I don’t believe any sign has ever said “Hatfield and The North”. The post-Worboys signs say:
THE NORTH
Hatfield
A1
As Chris pointed out, signs pre-Worboys didn’t tend to mention long-distance destinations. Signs saying A1 HATFIELD feel more likely to me.
There are some interesting maps to be found here
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/
By selecting “Historic London Maps” you can see examples from 1926, with road numbering, and 1937, inner and outer London, sadly without numbering. Some of the 1937 plans look remarkably similar to roads built 40 to 50 years later.
I have always assumed when driving along it that the ridiculously over-engineered Trinity Road (from Wandsworth Bridge south-eastwards through Wandsworth Common) was designed as a continuation of the West-Cross Route.
It lines up on the map.
It is about a mile of 3-lane dual carriageway with underpasses and slip roads, which suddenly becomes a narrow residential street.
@Si – I was talking here about a time in the very early ’70s, well before lobbying groups produced maps; the map in question was definitely an internal DG/Highways job – no senior civil servant would ever have a map on their walls produced by a lobbying group. The same timing point applies to the Blackwater Valley route on which we expended much Transport Supplementary Grant in the period up to about 1975; it was certainly the intention to link it to the A329{M) and to extend it . The problem was that south and east of the roundabout on the outskirts of Farnham, there is no easy or obvious way of linking it to eg a road to bypass Guildford. (linking it to the Hogs Back simply dumps the prospective bypassing traffic in the centre of Guildford itself.)
@Anonymously – that’s the one – thank you for supplying the proposed number (I didn’t have time to examine the map in that detail!). The map showed it as a completed ring including some “conceptual” crossing of the lower Thames.
@ChrisMitch
“assumed that the over-engineered Trinity Road (from Wandsworth Bridge south-eastwards through Wandsworth Common) was designed as a continuation of the West-Cross Route.”
It was – part of the “Balham Loop” which was to have distributed M23 traffic, from its terminus at Streatham, west to meet the WXR at Battersea and east to meet the SXR at Brixton. The map I linked to earlier shows this loop.
A similar arrangement was envisaged for M4 traffic, with a link from Brentford via Acton, roughly along the route of the A4000 to connect with the NXR at Harlesden, and another link to the SXR, following the Brentford- Clapham Junction railway (and with a junction with an extended M3 in the middle of Chiswick!).
@Malcolm…Yes, it does host a famous yearly air show (although it was axed between 2010-14 due to contractual and financial issues, and is no longer as large as it once was)….that’s why those temporary yellow AA ‘event’ road signs appear whenever it is on to help guide visiting traffic.
If what you say is true, and a very small group of rich, influential people are able to get a minor destination added to road signs (at significant cost) just for their convenience, then I shudder to think what else they can do :o…..
Briantist says “I recall there was considerable consternation on the South Coast when the A23/A27 upgrades happened and the signs said “Brighton” when the city is called “Brighton and Hove”. Still, corrections were made!”
I wonder what sort of corrections. The local authority may have the phrase “Brighton and Hove” as part of its name, but Brighton is still a place, as is Hove. So signs would logically still allowed to point to either of these places. (I do realise that sometimes when civic pride is invoked, logic can fly out of the window).
“Kensington and Chelsea” is also the name of a local authority, but that (rightly to my mind) does not prevent either name being used in isolation where appropriate.
Anonymously: I should have said that my suggestion about the reason for adding Biggin Hill Airport to signs is pure speculation, and I have no evidence whatever for it. There could be some other explanation entirely (e.g. someone wrote to the council to suggest it, and maybe they forgot to check whether it was a sensible suggestion and just did it anyway).
There are plenty of extraneous shudder-making examples, which it would be entirely off-topic to list, of how rich influential people can get away with certain things. After all, that’s more or less what “influential” means…
@Briantist and others: The funny thing is that my encyclopedia specifically says “The Motor Box” (not “motorway”), quoting it in English. Since it’s also being described as an existing piece of infrastructure, I’m tentatively concluding that the encyclopedist (one Kai Lemberg, 1919-) must have been smoking something strong.
—–
How good are satnav systems at describing roads and intersections in terms that map to what is actually visible in the real world? I’ve noticed that some digital mapping systems are inordinately fond of road numbers, to the degree that they tend to deny the existence of actual names for roads that happen to be classified. (Try, for example, to see how far you need to zoom in on A400 northbound before Google Maps breaks down and confesses that you’re looking at Tottenham Court Road!)
Ian Sargeant
I have in my possession (don’t ask) a pre-Warboys sign reading:
“Hatfield
The North A1”
@slugabed – and those of us who had to endure family holidays in the Highlands before the MI were familiar with the sign at Scotch Corner that said “Biggleswade 249 miles (or something similar), London 280 miles (or whatever)” . How we looked forward to the next six hours in eager anticipation of Biggleswade…
BTW – I still enjoy the sign on the A1 that points to the Hemingford Grays – perhaps some of you have been introduced to them?
At the risk of drifting into reverie…..in Northants I was always intrigued by the signs which simply said “Old”…
@slugabed – vaguely on topic, there was a famous Lincolnshire fingerpost that said “To Old Bolingbroke and Mavis Enderby” – to which a wag had added “A son; both are doing well”,
BTW Old in Northants is the home to that ever famous removal firm, Knights of Old.
Graham refers to a sign to the Hemingford Grays.
According to my (also fallible) memory, the sign was on the A604 (nowadays the A14) and it pointed to “The Hemingfords”. (To whom I have also not had the pleasure of being introduced). Presumably meaning Hemingford Grey and Hemingford Abbots. I was walking through fields there with my fiancée, when two sisters-in-law coming the other way said “Are you Malcolm?”; they turned out to be my junior school secretary and welfare nurse. This comment will shortly self-destruct through off-topicality.
@Malcolm – I’m sure you’re right although I ‘m not sure I have ever had occasion to use the A14. Does it go anywhere interesting? [BTW do not worry about life-shortening coincidences – statistically, they are to be expected…]
@Malcolm – with apologies for the double post and the drift – I now see that Hemingford Grey is actually quite close to the A1 – a simple exit at Hail Weston and then Yelling – as you do. Presumably that’swhat I remember.
@Graham H
“the A14. Does it go anywhere interesting?”
As we are a London-based site, surely all you need to know about the A14 is that it is north of Watford Gap!
Graham: A14 is a recycled road number; both incarnations of it (which intersect at Godmanchester) went/go to many interesting places, far too numerous to fit in this margin.
@Graham H
“I was talking here about a time in the very early ’70s, well before lobbying groups produced maps”
In fact one of the most effective maps produced by a lobbying group was the so-called ‘tea-room map’ of 1938. This followed a large delegation, organised by the British Roads Federation, to Germany to see the autobahns (and to see Herr Hitler meet Sr Mussolini). So taken was the delegation by the idea of autobahns they proposed a network for Britain which was exhibited in the House of Commons tea room. Strangely enough, the 1938 map proposed what we now call motorways from London to Leeds via Leicester and Sheffield, with a branch from a point near Rugby going just north of Coventry and Birmingham before turning north to go to Carlisle via Warrington, Preston and Lancaster. A further motorway went west from London to Newport and Cardiff with a further link from Bristol leading just to the west of Birmingham and joining the route to Carlisle. How coincidental that these proposals are almost exactly the same as the M1, M4, M5 and M6.
Quinlet
The wheel turns full circle….the constructional specifications of the German Autobahns were,apparently,based upon the Southend Arterial Road….
@Quinlet – most interesting – although such maps had vanished (presumably with the war) by my time in DTp.I can’t say I’m surprised that they foreshadowed some of the later motorway network – the choice of routes is to a large extent self-selecting. [As I encountered it then, the planning process was pretty crude, in the absence of modern transport planning techniques – link London to the ports and the ports to the major conurbations, was about the sum of it].
It would be interesting and relevant if someone could lay their hands on the map of the “Motor roads” envisaged by Balfour when Prime Minister. My understanding was that Honeypot Lane Stanmore ( a dual carriageway to nowhere now) was supposed to be the start of the Motor Road to the north.
Tea room map: see for example this mention.
Apart from the Hemingfords, there are now rural Essex signs which say: “The Willingales”
Of which there are two .. W Doe & W Spain ( & two churches in one churchyard.
Not too far from Shellow Bowells, either ( No, I did NOT make that up! )
Come to that, what about not just “Old” but Ugley (Essex) & Loose ( Kent) ….
@Malcolm -another interesting feature of the tea room map and its back history is that – relevant to this article – it seems to have had no impact whatsoever on the classification of roads which trundled merrily along the guidelines laid down in the ’20s with nary a glance ahead. It would also be interesting to understand why the Germans were so far ahead of us in conceiving,planning and constructing a network of motorways.
For many years I was amused by the enormous sign alongside the A1 near the Ram Jam Inn which simply stated “to the Norht”. It may still be there for all I know.
@Malcolm
Hoping not being off-topic now. …
[Yes, this is too far off topic. Signposts to Brighton and/or Hove would be relevant, but not the details of where boundaries lie within the city. Malcolm]
From a mod: Perhaps we’ve had enough amusing or quirky place names to be going on with for now…
One oddity of the present road numbering system that has really only become apparent with the spread of satnavs is the use of a separate number for very short link roads – sometimes no more than a link to a roundabout. Conversely, there appear to be a number of such links which are given the same number as a much longer route,even where they have no direct contact with that.
A fascinating tale. I am familiar with the sign in Carshalton Beeches, but had never given much thought to why it was there. Given that Beynon Road was built to carry the Southmet trams c1907, Carshalton Park Road would have ceased to be a logical route even before the roads were numbered. And it was never the main route. Park Hill (the current B278) was the old road, and CPR part of an early Edwardian housing development.
A propos the Stepney confrontation, the Gospel reference is wrong. It’s actually Matthew XII v39!
Quinlet says “How coincidental that these proposals [from the Tea Room Map] are almost exactly the same as the M1, M4, M5 and M6”
At first the resemblance did strike me as surprising. But then I thought, given the shape of Britain, the significance of London, Glasgow and Cardiff, the difficulty of building a road lengthwise through the Pennines, and the pre-existence of the Great North Road, no other layout would make any sense at all.
On the subject of Signs and Sensibility, how I wish those who place direction signs on roads were also made to follow them from beginning to end (without any sat-nav).
There is nothing more frustrating, especially after dark, to follow signs towards a destination, then to come upon a junction which is unsigned, or the destination/road number has mysteriously disappeared from any sign which is present.
Cannot think of any specific example off-hand, but certainly have been caught out on a number of occasions down the years in strange towns, and eventually have had pull over and try and read the map by a streetlamp.
Malcolm – I think Wikipedia may be correct about Henly’s. If you google “henly’s garage picture”, for example, you get old photos of the garages and an advertisement where Henly’s is clearly spelt without an “e”. This is also how I remember it, but given my advancing years, that doesn’t prove anything.
@Jim – You are right to look at the pictures (which I hadn’t until you prompted us). In particular,there is a very curious picture showing “Henlys -the leading Austin motor specialist” with a showroom full of what are clearly cars built in the early to mid-thirties and passersby dressed to match. This doesn’t square at all with the Wiki information that Henlys was founded in 1947 by a chap with an extra e. Maybe Mr Henley’s purchase was just another case of serendipity; if so, will the real Henly stand up? [Or it may be just the usual case that Wiki is wrong
According to Companies House:
HENLYS LIMITED was incorporated on 31/10/1928. Voluntary Creditors Liquidation on 06/01/2006
HENLYS GROUP PLC was incorporated on 13/05/1947 but has changed names several times, all previous names in the last twenty years included the word PLAXTON. Voluntary Creditors Liquidation on 24/01/2006
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk//companysearch?disp=1&frfsh=1442754008&#result
I clearly remember the “Hatfield and the North” signs in the early 1960s around Palmers Green I think they were. Never “Anywhere else” and the North, always Hatfield
On the approaches the M25 from the north on both the A1(M) and the M11, the signs to the clockwise M25 still show “Dartford Tunnel”, although the tunnel hasn’t been part of the clockwise carriageway since the QE2 bridge was built over 20 years ago. Memories take a long time to fade…
@kit Green -that rather suggests that either Wiki is wrong to mention a Mr HenlEy as the 1947 founder or it’s just one of those extraordinary coincidences.
Re A14
Quite an interesting history.The original A14 started at Royston on the A10 and continued via Godmanchester to Alconbury on the A1.
Now starts at Felixstowe and was originally the A45 as far as Cambridge then joining the A 604 from there to Huntingdon.In 1994 the A1-M1/M6 link opened and the whole road reclassified A14.
@GT & R953 – If the Enfield to Palmers Green (A406 junction formerly known as the Cock, now Clock House Juntion) “mini Holland” scheme just loused things up for cars, I might possibly support it. Unfortunately as presently drafted, some but not all cyclists may be beneficiaries. All motor traffic, bus passengers, the elderly, the disabled, users of taxis and minicabs, home delivery recipients, Dial a Ride users, the entire route 125 bus service, local small businesses and pedestrians are adversely affected and in some cases physically endangered for the mere direct cost of £30 million. I now consider that the entire plan should be abandoned. If the object is to encourage people to take up cycling, just leave the road layout alone and introduce a properly enforced 20 mph limit. I await the first prosecution of a bus driver for extending the wheelchair ramp into the path of an approaching cyclist on a dark wet evening…..
I reckon that the inhabitants of the Netherlands would sue for defamation if they knew what was being called a mini Holland.
@ Roger P – yes, when the waypoints were chosen for traffic direction signs in the late 19th and early 20th century, most of the destinations were rural towns and villages.
@ everyone else – Henlys Corner after Henlys BMC Garage, Staples Corner (A5/A406) after Staples bed factory. However, which came first, the Cambridge roundabout (A10/A111/A406)or the Cambridge pub?
Some waypoints have tiny populations – Scotch Corner, for example. There aren’t many people living in the Dartford Tunnel, for that matter. That doesn’t make them silly places to put on signposts.
The original A14, now the A1198, was a link road from the A10 to the A1, all them part of Ermine Street, the Roman Road built to move troops from Londinium to the north. Alconbury remains the point at which Great North Road travellers get the choice between East London (now via A14 and M11) and West London (via A1)
@Nameless – well, not Henly’s *BMC* garage, as the photos show; way back in the ’20s, BMC was far in the future. And still no explanation as to the mysterious Mr HenlEy who appeared 20 years later.
As to waypoints, until well into the C20, these were effectively the next significant town or village because of the need to change horses every ten miles or so. The only strategic markers were on milestones which often mentioned London (or in our area of Surrey, Brighton, but never, for example, Portsmouth, Chichester or Southampton)
Nameless
It is somewhat unfortunate that many of the most vociferous antis were previously campaigning for. free parking, which would also have done nothing for other road users.
@Graham H – Hereabouts, they hedged their bets and the milestone on Red Post Hill close to North Dulwich station:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3427/3390669282_9d54ce0e1f.jpg
states “4½ Miles from the Strand and Cornhill”.
GF: actually “The Standard Cornhill” – see http://wordsmith.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=113009
@Greg T:
AIUI, the Driving test is soon likely to include sat-nav use as a testable component.
Not exactly. A pilot has been carried out for replacing:
10 minutes independent driving using traffic signs or verbal directions
with:
20 minutes independent driving using a satnav or traffic signs
We will provide the satnav, and you can’t use your own. It will be pre-programmed and the driving examiner will fit it to the windscreen.
So the test would be to see if you can follow directions from a satnav without getting distracted by the screen, replacing the less-common-in-real-life scenario of being given directions by a driving instructor.
The alternative option, which already exists, is to be asked to follow road signs somewhere, which is of course dependent on there being adequate road signs (though I’m sure there will be a finite number of routes pre-chosen by examiners as having good enough signs, and that the more clued-up driving instructors will work out what these routes are and make sure they use them in driving lessons…)
@AlisonW: people should _know_ how to read a *map* dammit
But not while driving, I hope!
@Mike – Oops! I was going to comment on why the “R” in “Strand” seemed to have been omitted! I’ll have to advise a couple of local historians….. Thanks.
Now then, how does the Standard Cornhill relate to e.g. the London Stone as a point of measurement and just where on Cornhill was it located? This passage in the article makes no mention of it: “Until 1951, London did not have a central point to which distances were measured. – Traditionally, there were actually seven such places, all related to the itineraries of mail coaches in centuries gone by. They were incredibly inconsistent, and only one was within a mile of Charing Cross. Depending on the direction of approach, distances might be measured from Marble Arch, Hyde Park Corner, Westminster Bridge, London Bridge, Whitechapel Church, Shoreditch Church or (perhaps the most obscure of all) the site of Hick’s Hall on St John Street, a building that had been demolished in 1778.” – and I did not see other mention of it but Dulwich obviously had a reason to quote Cornhill..
@Graham Feakins -there is a plaque on Cornhill, near its junction with Gracechurch St that records the demolition in 1674 of the Standard, which was a water conduit. As you say, there were multiple “centroids”,depending, I suspect, on the date of their first use – for example, round here (SW Surrey), Hyde Park Corner is sometimes the base -that would have been a meaningless choice much before regency times. Presumably, one of the determinants for the more outlying centroids was where the edge of the built up area had reached at the time. Ryanair would have approved…
@Graham Feakins – having done a little delving now into the wonderful Survey of London volume dealing with Clerkenwell, it turns out that Hicks hall is not so obscure – it was, in fact, built as the Sessions House for Middlesex in 1612 (demolished 1782) and called Hicks hall because it was paid for by Sir Baptist Hicks, one of King James’ bankers. It stood at the junction of St John’s St and St John’s Lane – now marked by a traffic island where the road widens. It was conventionally regarded as the starting point of the Great North Road (presumably thence via Upper Street) in replacement for the “Old North Road” via Hoxton. As a mileage base, it does in fact fit the pre-Charing Cross pattern of sometimes choosing a marker on the edge of the built up area, Clerkenwell being about the limit of development in 1612.
I regret to say that the Victorians preferred to substitute for the proposed mileage column on the site, a set of public conveniences.
@Graham F/Graham H
The end of St John Street is a logical end for the Great North Road. The A1 makes a sharp left turn at the Angel, but if you continue straight on you do indeed end up at the site of Hicks Hall, on the boundary of the City of London. Continuing straight ahead into the City takes you through the middle of Smithfield Market and past St Barts Hospital to rejoin the A1 at its terminus at St Pauls, outside the old GPO building (probably not coincidentally, the other terminus is at the GPO building in Edinburgh). I would guess that the diversion of the Great North Road at the Angel dates from the opening of Smithfield Market. The Mail coaches would want to avoid the traffic around there (and the smell of meat might frighten the motive power!)
Also, it was probably easier to get mail coaches to make a sharp left at the Angel than the produce to be sold at the market – much of which, in the days before refrigeration, was delivered on the hoof and, unlike the mail horses, would not know the way!
@Graham F”states “4½ Miles from the Strand and Cornhill”.
@Mike: “actually “The Standard Cornhill” ”
But coincidentally, according to Google maps, it is 4½ miles to the Strand, via the direct route over Waterloo Bridge
@timbeau = perhaps, although the old GPO/GLO is unlikely to have been a marker in the C17 (the GLO dates from 1661). Street directories suggest that the mail coaches tended to cluster at inns on Cornhill rather than round Clerkenwell/St Johnsor what became the GPO site. The trouble is that there were many Great North Roads until the C19; it’s better to think of the GNR as a braided network anything upto 5 miles across. So far as London ‘s end of the network is concerned, the defining elements are the exit gates from the City.
@Graham F – so I reviewed the Wiki article on the London Stone. It’s fairly accurate and accords with LondonTopographical Society and MOLAS research, for once. In short, no one knows for certain what it is; it has no traceable connexion with Cornhilland certainly predates the Standard by 500 tears,quite possibly by 1500 years…
@GrahamH 09:38 Why would you regret the choice of a set of public conveniences over a mileage column? If there’s a moral to London Reconnections at all it is that infrastructure must always be provided for the regular needs of the city, not the specialist interest of transport obsessives.
To follow on from a recent Graham H’s comment, it is perhaps worth noting that the ‘New Road from Paddington to the City’ (as shown on a large scale map of built up and not-built-up London that I have for 1790), was the Georgian equivalent of the orbital M25 and was built through the then outer London countryside.
It was primarily to reduce congestion on existing (and former Roman) routes such as Oxford Street and Knight’s Bridge, for the HCVs of the day, as well as providing a faster distributor route for the City from the N, NW and western national corridors. It was a strategic arterial road of the times. As GH indicates, the HCVs (heavy cattle volumes) walked to the break-bulk interchange at Smithfield.
@Graham H
The GPO only moved to King Edward Street in 1907 (the King Edward Building is named after the then-current monarch, but the street is named after his C16 predecessor, who founded the Christ’s Hospital School on the site later occupied by the GPO).
The Royal Mail had been a big driver in early C18 road-building, notably Telford’s Holyhead Road, built to improve the mail run between London and Dublin, but very quickly superseded by the LNWR), and the choice of the end-points of the A1 in 1923 may reflect the historic connection between the main post offices of London and Edinburgh.
But the GPO headquarters has moved several times: locations have included:
1643: Cloak Lane, near where Cannon Street station now stands (close to the London Stone)
1678: near what later became the “hub” of the road numbering system at Bank, between the “spokes” of Lombard Street and Cornhill – hence the clustering of mail coaches at Cornhill
1825: St Martins le Grand – later expanded to include the King Edward Street site.
There were at least three roads north,
– the present A1 from Aldersgate, through Islington (Upper Street),
– the “New North Road” (A1200) from Moorgate, which meets Upper Sreet at Highbury Corner
– the Old North Road (A10) – the Roman Ermine Street – from Bishopsgate, which meets the Great North Road at Alconbury.
To these we might add the modern M1 and M11.
Which one would choose would depend on many things, such as availability of accommodation, and indeed the season. Look at the route followed by the funeral cortege of Eleanor of Castile from Lincoln to Westminster in 1290, marked by the twelve “Eleanor Crosses”.
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Photo%20Pages/UK/British%20History/Eleanor%20Crosses/Eleanor_Crosses.htm
This took what looks like a very long detour between Stamford and Waltham Cross, by way of Stony Stratford (in what is now Milton Keynes). The direct route across the fens would have been shorter, but this journey was perforce made in November, when the drier route along the limestone ridgeway to pick up Watling Street where it passes through the ridge at the Watford Gap would have been preferable. (The same Gap, of course, was later exploited by Telford’s Holyhead Road, the Grand Union Canal, the London & Birmingham railway, and the M1 motorway, as the easiest low-level route across the watershed between the South East and the Midlands)
@Wax Lyrical – I fully agree with you about the need for more public conveniences – so many have been lost (TDA*!), although in the particular area we are talking about, there was a fairly high concentration, for once… (alas, not any more)
@Jonathan Roberts – 🙂 Apparently it was the cattle trade from the Welsh Marches that caused the greatest difficulty by walking down Oxford Street on their way to the City (must have been fun in the S Giles area, given the congeries of narrow streets …) It’s interesting that Shillibeer chose the New Road axis for his pioneering route – that suggests that the New road succeeded in providing a reasonably uncongested route, whereas other possibilities remained congested (or perhaps were entirely inhabited by carriage folk, or still lived in the City within walking distance of their work)
*Thread Drift Alert
My apologies, the General Letter Office was started in 1653*, not 1661, (and stood in Post House Yard,from 1666 perhaps near Cloak Lane – the GPO didn’t move to the St Martin’s site until c1827, so that couldn’thave been a mileage marker in the C17 and C18)
* The very foolish “openplaques” website describes the GLO plaque as showing that this chap General Letter Office lived from 1653 to 1666,dying at the early age of 13…
@Graham H
As Shillibeer’s first omnibus appear to have been green in colour (if the 1929 replica is accurate), it could be said with this route running partly in the countryside that he simultaneously pioneered the Green Line as well as the central bus service…
@Graham H
“It’s interesting that Shillibeer chose the New Road axis for his pioneering route ”
He had little choice – only licenced hackney carriage operators could operate in the central, paved, area known as the “Stones”.
TfL research guide No 14 – Horse Buses in London
Doubtless the Regency-era cabbies saw the arrival of these new-fangled fixed-fare 3hp uber-conveyances as a threat to their livelihoods (or have I fallen through a virtual hypertext wormhole into another thread altogether?)
@timbeau – 🙂 yes,he had to operate outside the stones, but there were middle class suburbs beginning to spring up elsewhere outside the stones -for example, along some of the main arteries in S London or out towards Hackney,or northwards towards Stamford Hill (although SF itself, came,of course,much later). Some of these had rather easier topography than the climb up to the Angel, too. [In fact, although Shillibeer is traditionally regarded as the pioneer of omnibus services, there seem to have been short-distance timetabled stage services to places such as Richmond for about fifty years previous to that.]
Briantist@19 September 2015, 13:06
When did Hoddesdon get downgraded to a village? It’s been a town as long as I’ve known it.
Anonymous 1412
I was using understatement for effect (big road to little town) – I’m sorry if I have offended.
@Graham H
“short-distance timetabled stage services to places such as Richmond for about fifty years previous to [Shillibeer]”
These were normal stage coaches, for which you had to book in advance. Shillibeer’s novelty, and the reason he had to stay clear of the “Stones”, was that he picked up passengers without booking – hence the need for a conductor. Within the Stones, only the licenced hackney carriage trade could be hailed to pick up passengers.
Indeed, well into the motorised era, London buses had to be licenced by the Metropolitan Police like taxis – see the white plate on the rear of this LT type of 1931.
I’m not sure when this requirement ended – possibly on the formation of London transport in 1933 – although the Met Police still operated as a regulator of services operating from within its area – hence the distinction between London Transport’s regulated “Central” (red) and unregulated “Country” (green) routes.
I notice that the older signs have the locations inscribed in upper case characters only. the modern standard is upper and lower case. I know that the general recommendation is that is should be upper and lower case, as this makes it easier for people with visual difficulties (like myself) This is certainly true for lengths of text, but does this apply for single words on signs and destination indicators?
I find that lower case characters are too small to distinguish easily at a distance when you just have one or two words and no other context. E.g: Norbury, NORBURY; Hounslow. HOUNSLOW.
Interestingly, the only typeface with I find easy to read at length in all upper case is Gill Sans, closely based on Johnston’s font.
@timbeau – a number of urban myths there,I fear. Firstly, the short stage coaches didn’t require pre-booking; you could book, but a significant proportion of their traffic was by flagging them down at will, Barker and Robbins (Vol 1, page 4) makes this very clear in discussing the growth of the short stage traffic). The essential point was that these short stage coaches couldn’t carry local traffic within the “stones” (which marked the Bills of Mortality area); there the hackney cariages had a monopoly. What Shillibeer did was to provide two new features -he picked up local traffic nearly all the way into the City(because the New Road and City Road were outside the stones; and he ran to a fixed timetable, making that a selling point – as he wrote: “The other coaches hang about at the public houses a quarter of an hour or ten minutes, but I go right away whether I have passengers or not”.
The second urban myth is that the distinction between red and green LT buses had something to do with the Metropolitan Police Area. The LGOC red buses by no means penetrated throughout the MPA,and many parts of the MPA were served exclusively by what became the green LGOC Country Services,noteably in NW Surrey. The distinction was essentially one of history – the LGOC had built up a glacis of partner firms such as East Surrey to protect its core business and had slowly taken these over. The geography was dictated by the agreements that firms like East Surrey had signed with the surrounding firms (including the LGOC). As the new LT made very clear to the former managers of LGOC Country Services, they had no intention of merging the red and green operations because of the pay differentials. Nothing to do with police regulation.
To return to my original point, however, there were a number of routes (noteably that to Greenwich) which could have met his criteria and where he could have picked up local fares close into the City but he preferred the Paddington route – perhaps because there was less competition from the existing short stage operators.
I have probably stretched the tolerance of the moderators enough…
@JohnR
“I know that the general recommendation is that is should be upper and lower case, as this makes it easier for people with visual difficulties (like myself) This is certainly true for lengths of text, but does this apply for single words on signs and destination indicators? I find that lower case characters are too small to distinguish easily at a distance when you just have one or two words and no other context. E.g: Norbury, NORBURY; Hounslow. HOUNSLOW.”
My understanding of the theory is that the visual distinctiveness at a distance is derived not from the size of the individual letters but the shape of the word as a whole. As upper case letters are all the same size, all words are more or less the same shape – all you have to go on is the length (and number) of the words. Lower case letters have much more variety in size, some with risers (like b and d), some with tails (like g and j), and some with nether (like a and c), making it much easier to identify a word (or at least eliminate some of the possibilities) from its shape, before the individual characters are large enough to be discernable.
Thank you for the warm welcome and kind words about the article! There’s a number of questions and other thoughts directed at me above which I’ll try to respond to here.
@Matt – old road signs are scrapped. I attempted to save the Through Routes-era signs from the Aldwych, but didn’t managed to catch any of them before they hit the scrapyard. It’s possible to buy old ones but the market for them seems very small and generally when they’re taken down they are destroyed.
@Reynolds 953 – A- and B-road designations are now largely in the hands of local authorities, so assuming your road is maintained by your borough council, they could just change the designation if they so wished. There would be costs associated with this and possibly other non-obvious implications which might be why they are giving you excuses.
@RayL – Briantist has addressed this already, but arrows on direction signs almost exclusively refer to a direction in which you should turn. Having circular arrows to indicate directions would break that convention. More conventional, and possibly more intuitive, would be to change the regulations that apply to road signs to permit the suffixes (A) and (C) – anticlockwise and clockwise – which could follow the road number in the same way as cardinal directions (N), (S), etc already sometimes do.
@Southern Heights – the A406 never went to the Woolwich Ferry and I was careful when writing the article not to suggest it did – the North Circular was routed south from Waterworks Corner along existing A-roads in 1951; until the late 1980s though, when the South Woodford to Barking Relief Road opened, though, the A406 went east to Gants Hill. It’s only since about 1989 that the A406 has come as close to the Woolwich Ferry as it does now. I’m afraid I don’t know why, amid all the other numbering changes, the A406 wasn’t routed that way to match the signposting of the North Circular.
@ChrisMitch and @timbeau – let’s put the Trinity Road myth to bed once and for all – many times I’ve seen suggestions like yours, that it was supposed to be part of the West Cross Route, or elsewhere that it was supposed to be the northern terminus of the M23. It was neither; in the 1960s it was considered by the GLC, who built it, as part of their Secondary Road Network, not their Primary Network of motorways. It would have continued north of the river on a much widened Wandsworth Bridge, turned east, and interchanged with the WCR before flowing into the Chelsea Embankment. A southward extension towards the A24 was also envisioned. The WCR itself was supposed to cross the Thames alongside the West London Line and would have been bigger and more intrusive, in every way, than Trinity Road. It also was not part of the “Balham Loop”, which would have run further east alongside the Brighton Mainline.
Trinity Road is really the Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach and had its genesis in 1930s plans – contemporary with the building of the bridge itself – for an improved South Circular, alluded to in the article. The South Circular had already been sent west by the time this road opened and now crosses Trinity Road at a right angle.
@John R – mixed case lettering is recommended for road signs specifically because it was found better when reading short words such as place names. As timbeau writes, the logic is that, before the word is even fully legible and in focus, its overall shape can already be made out, as mixed-case lettering has ascenders and descenders giving each word a distinctive pattern. That makes a sign effectively legible sooner than if it were written in all-caps. There’s more on my website in an article about the development of our current road signs – the page on David Kindersley is most relevant: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/war-to-worboys/
@Timbeau. I agree that that is the theory, but for single words as a distance (which is how most road signs are read) the lower-case letters are too small to see clearly, and the shape of the word is often not distinctive enough.
A lower case letter like ‘a’ or ‘e’ or ‘m’ is almost only one third the height of the same letter if the sign is all in upper-case, because letters like ‘h’ or ‘g’ need space for the ascenders and descenders. And it’s worse with dot-matrix signs. Although we don’t have these on bus destinations in London, just have a look at the scrolling signs inside trains and buses.
Mind you, they’re my dodgy eyes and other people may have other views, but I think there’s bit of dogma crept into this ruling about mixed-case.
Chris Marshall says “arrows on direction signs almost exclusively refer to a direction in which you should turn”
Worth mentioning that an up-arrow on a direction sign is not (in the UK) an invitation to get airborne. The convention up=straight-on is so universal here that it is a shock to discover that France does no such thing. There straight-on is indicated by a left-pointing symbol on the right hand side of the road.
The up=straight-on idea is carried through to traffic lights, no-U-turn signs, no-right-turn signs, etc, but contradicted slightly by the arrow on mid-street traffic islands, where the arrow points diagonally down to the correct (or occasionally the incorrect) side of the island.
John R – This paper published by Microsoft summarises the research (up to 2004) on upper and lowercase text, and when tested people are about 5-10% faster reading text in lowercase. Several theories have been proposed, such as the word shape, which he discounts. It appears that we can learn to read uppercase faster and are just more familiar with lowercase words.
There may be later papers …
@John R
@Edgepedia
Whilst we are on the subject of fonts and word recognition, the RNIB’s font “Tiresias ScreenFont” is worth a mention because of the excellent research that goes into .
http://www.tiresias.org/fonts/screenfont/report_screen.htm
Word recognition and accessibility has always been a bit of a passion of mine. Tiresias you will see if you press the SUBTITLE button on any UK television.
The above link (and site) is well worth a read if you want to know more about how people – especially those with sub-optimal eyesight – recognise words and how big type need to be to be readable.
And a down pointing arrow also means go straight ahead
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.3185572,-0.441523,3a,75y,317.56h,90.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seD5xRS6Y2gsbeeQqnq2Vsw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
or the opposite
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.3214667,-0.4516998,3a,75y,69.8h,90.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sm4QMgl2tZM0H9bWQTjGgIQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Edgepedia says “Several theories have been proposed, such as the word shape, which he [Larson] discounts”
It’s obviously difficult to sum up a relevant part of an academic paper with enough information to help readers decide whether or not to read it. But I have just read it, was impressed, and would like to amplify “discounts”. What Larson does, among much else, is to explain why the word shape model is (he says) contra-indicated by much recent research. This paper does seem to support John R’s proposition that “there’s bit of dogma crept into this ruling about mixed-case”
There is a lot of dogma in the mixed-case vs upper-case argument, at least where road signs are concerned. At the very least, it is fair to say that when the decision was taken to use mixed-case lettering on road signs from 1963 onwards, the available research was not particularly conclusive. David Kindersley, arguing for upper-case letters, and the Road Research Laboratory, arguing for mixed-case, were engaged in fairly brutal academic mudslinging over the issue, yet both used the same Californian research paper to substantiate their arguments. There was, without a doubt, an element of politics involved in the choice of mixed-case lettering because there was a perception that it was more modern and more European.
Another notable switch from upper-case to mixed-case was London Underground. Branded material like tube maps, for example, were once often entirely upper-case but no longer are. And British Rail’s Corporate Identity – which was, of course, created a few years after the current Worboys system of traffic signs by the same two graphic designers, Kinneir and Calvert – made station signage on the national railway network mixed-case too.
@Chris Marshall…Thanks for your great article. I’ve been a fan of your website for many years! Glad to see that you’re now updating it regularly again.
Are you able to shed any further light on my question regarding the choice of destinations on primary route signs within London (18/9, 20:51)?
@timbeau
Sorry to be picky, but…
“And a down pointing arrow also means go straight ahead”
I think you will find that it means “Downward pointing arrows mean ‘Get in lane’”[1]
“or the opposite”
On junction layout signs that’s not an arrow, it’s doesn’t have an arrowhead. It’s a line…
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/442630/the-highway-code-direction-signs.pdf
@Briantist
“On junction layout signs that’s not an arrow, it’s doesn’t have an arrowhead”
It has a pointy end though, even if the shaft is the same width as the head!
I know at least one driver who read this as a straight ahead filter arrow.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.219195,-0.5335196,3a,15y,349.92h,87.44t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKBAGGkiktecF2K6krSpxAA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
All that talk about Abercrombie and Ringways and the North and South Circulars reminds me of Episode 2 of Unfinished London.
I wonder how much signers consider having memorable names for their destinations. I remember the horror in pre-satnav days in entering the Mitcham-Morden-Merton triangle in SW London. Places that sound so similar and dull and have no clear geographical relation, they just swirled around in my head. How I longed for a sign to Tooting or Wimbledon.
Now its sat-nav everywhere, even on familiar routes, to allow for hold-ups to be flagged. The satnav designers seem to use the road-signs for their announcements (and you brace yourself for the spiel on joining the M25), but is there an official list the planners circulate, with updates every few months?
“Mitcham-Morden-Merton triangle”
Apart from the similarity of names, the area also suffers from “location creep”, so no-one is really sure where they are anyway.
“Merton” is the name of an obscure backwater with and no mention on the Tube map, and a sparse train service (to South Merton, which is actually closer to Morden – to add to the confusion, Morden Road tram stop is in Merton!)
The nearest station of any kind to Merton Abbey is South Wimbledon!,
“Merton” is also the name of the much larger area covered by the London borough which has taken its name. This can be confusing, in the same way that anyone trying to find Lambeth Town hall from the only station with “Lambeth” in its name is in for a long walk.
Mitcham tram stop is some distance from the centre of Mitcham and is no closer to the centre than the original Tooting station, which is actually just on the Mitcham side of the old LCC/Surrey border (although the new station at Mitcham Eastfields has improved the situation somewhat)
The lack of any coherent strategic road network in the are doesn’t help – a number of half completed projects such as Merantun Way and St Helier Avenue which don’t meet up but fizzle out into complex one way systems. Even the Roman Stane Street, which is largely followed by the modern A24 and A29 all the way to the coast, seems to be untraceable in the Wandle Valley between Colliers Wood and Morden Park
Timbeau/John Bray
Don’t forget to add “Malden” to the mix….especially when,in the local dialect (which I am proud to claim as my own) it is practically homophonic with “Morden” and often needs repetition and careful checking to make sure which one is meant….
New Malden, Lower Modern, Old Malden, Morden.
All telephonic fun and games given their proximity.
Thanks for an interesting article and following comments – taken me hours to catch up. The perils of being away and a new article appearing that triggers a mammoth number of comments.
I still think we need a 6 storey suspended cafe in central Brixton. 😉 What a completely mad prospect that was. It reminds in part of what happened in Newcastle. It built the Central Motorway that sliced a horrible swathe through the inner eastern edge of the City Centre but was part of a much bigger set of such roads. I used to have a brochure for the “new” Central Newcastle with Eldon Square Shopping Centre surrounded by motorways. Although Eldon Square has swallowed large parts of the historic centre the extra motorways were held at bay. Thank goodness they largely were in London too although we have had the A406 and M11 devastation imposed on two edges of Waltham Forest.
As a non motorist it is slightly odd to read the observations of road signs almost all being from a driver’s viewpoint. Those of us who use buses or walk also have to use them too – sometimes just to confirm where we are, other times to get to specific places. There is just as much confusion, lack of consistency, gaps etc for non motorists as for motorists. Obviously I-Bus on the TfL bus network helps but even there the naming conventions are all over the place and you get the occasional instances of stop names being completely out of step with the on bus information.
While it is gratifying that Mr Roberts thinks I’m a fares basket expert I have to say I’m not. All I really understand is the basic issue that we have a revenue and pricing system that is “interlocked” between TfL, DfT and the TOCs. Clearly the Mayor can do things to zoning but it has a price tag because of the inextricable “lock in” between zones, pricing, revenue streams and TOC franchise finances. TfL can manage its revenue risk more directly but clearly there are budget implications there too. We have plenty of evidence of that “lock in” because of the need for TfL to promise to fund any deficits that the TOCs incur from the merging of the “daily caps” at the last fares revision, the “botched” (IMO) hybrid PAYG farescale and compensation to Abellio Greater Anglia imposed when TfL took on the Shenfield and West Anglia routes and from the compensation also due to AGA when Stratford is rezoned in Jan 2016. I think the Stratford rezoning is simply ridiculous and creates nonsenses at West Ham and Canning Town where the Mayor has refused to rezone them.
In terms of Timbeau’s plea about a certain stop in SW London I’d argue now is a damn good time to push for the change. Firstly we have the Mayoral elections and we have SWT being refranchised. Securing a firm commitment from Mayoral candidates to a rezoning would probably be a vote winner (for either Tory or Labour) and the consequences could be priced into the overall SWT new franchise from day one. You could avoid TfL paying anything out because you don’t rezone until the new franchise starts / first fares revision after the start date. I actually think the next Mayor would do far better to steal Mr Wolmar’s policy of tweaking the product range and bringing back things like the Z26 Day Travelcard / Cap and a selective policy of rezoning / simplification. That is likely to be far more affordable that a wholesale fares reduction although may not have the same electoral popularity. I think it’s also a bit of an easier sell actually – provided the detail is there. It is very noteworthy that Paris has just streamlined its Carte Orange products with massive price cuts because if you buy a Z12 ticket it now gives full Z15 validity. Only certain 2 zones combinations for outer zones are now cheaper than the “dezoned” ticket including the central area. A Carte Orange / Navigo now gives all of Paris and the outer areas for a low price – Euro 21.25 (£15.60) a week. Yep time to cry when you compare it to London where our equivalent weekly Z16 is a mere £63.60 (86.70 Euro).
On the subject of zones then I don’t know the detailed history but I did know the mastermind at LT who created Travelcard (and by implication the zones). I don’t know if he’s still there or has retired but he’d be the person to talk to (I’m not naming names here as it’d be unfair). It is worth noting that Tyne and Wear had introduced a honeycomb zonal structure, like a German common tariff scheme, in 1980 (I think) as a key element of facilitating the integrated bus and metro system that was brought in as the Metro expanded up to 1984 when the South Shields line opened and the final bits of bus integration worked through. Tyne and Wear ended up with a far more sophisticated system than London was ever had because it allowed single journey multi mode through ticketing – perfectly possible to go bus, metro, bus, ferry, bus for example on one single ticket. London’s never had that and never will IMO. I suspect London may be heading towards the replacement of Travelcard as a product with a system of zonal caps replacing it.
Sorry to go on about ticketing quite so much but I’m just responding to previous points raised.
@Anonymously 21/09 23:36: I haven’t seen the current guidelines for signposting in London, so my evidence that many of the destinations are the same as those chosen in 1951 simply comes from observing signs at the roadside. The claim that the work of the 1995 review was building on the 1950s probably applies more to the routes that were used and slightly less to the destinations chosen, as clearly there was some revision of destinations in 1995. I also don’t know why the destinations that were chosen in 1951 were chosen, I only know that they were, so I’m afraid I can’t answer any questions about why Newmarket was used and not Norwich (for example) with anything other than speculation.
Your question about the A232 is about the system of primary destinations, which are selected by the Department for Transport, and define the primary route network. (Primary routes are, of course, the ones shown in green on most maps and signposted on the ground with green-background signs.) On primary routes, the forward destination is always the next primary destination. So eastbound on the A232, beyond Croydon, the next primary destination you reach if you follow the green line is Sevenoaks: the M25 is not a primary destination; nor is Orpington; therefore they don’t appear – at least not until you get closer to them. Whether Sevenoaks should be the next primary destination or whether there should be others en route is open to debate, but within the rules of the system and the primary destinations that exist, the A232 does indeed go to Sevenoaks.
One of the things the 1995 review did was to assign more primary destinations within the boundaries of Greater London and thereby expand the number of places that appear on main road (green) signs within the urban area. If you look at the diagram from 1951 above, the system had three central destinations – City, Westminster and West End (though they were only to be used at junctions where there was more than one way to central London and the two approaches needed to be distinguished from each other; elsewhere “Central London” was to be used) – and destinations outside London, but no distinction between the suburbs. Blue local road signs would have pointed to Chelsea and Brixton and Ilford, of course, but on the main roads the destinations were just “in” or “out”. The ring roads were signposted as leading to the next two or three radial routes and not to places within London that they would take you. The addition of more suburban centres, and the corresponding addition of places within London to signs on main roads, was probably the most useful innovation in the 1995 review.
@Chris Marshall….Thanks for clearing that up. I clearly remember the sign replacement programme within Greater London which took place in 1999-2000 (mainly because that was when I was learning to drive!). As you say, it did help to clear up many inconsistencies and ambiguities with regards to destinations and numbered routes within the Greater London area, and more of the major suburbs finally appeared as primary route destinations (e.g. Bromley, Lewisham, Bexleyheath in my neck of the woods). The addition of more route numbers to signs was just as well, since satnavs often use these to direct motorists.
It still puzzles me why the DfT chooses some primary route destinations over other, more appropriate ones to appear on signs. Back in the days when there were only A roads and no motorways/bypasses, this did make some sense (e.g. Croydon to Sevenoaks via A232/A21, as currently signposted, was the most direct and quickest route), but now just appears as illogical, bordering on plain daft! It is not just limited to London…..I have come across similar examples elsewhere in the country. Perhaps you could look into this further in a future article on your website?
There are some very daft primary destinations on signs, implying very circuitous routings.
Two examples: approaching Andover on the A303 from the west (e,g from Devizes) you get a sign for Devizes via the A342. But anyone going from Andover to Devizes would use the A303 in the other direction, via Stonehenge.
Approaching Basildon on the A130 from Chelmsford and the A12 you get a sign for London via A127. This would take you back to the A12, so why would anyone approaching from that direction want to go that way? The sign doesn’t say you can stay on the A130 to pick up the A13, which also goes to London.
@Timbeau – not in my experience. The A342 is the quicker route and that is the way all my colleagues (and I) used to make the Devizes – Andover journey unless specific traffic problems were reported on the A342. The Enford valley north of Amesbury is very slow as is the road across the pain via Tilshead and Potterne.
I wonder how much social engineering went into signage, proposing approved routes that were slower for those that followed them, but benefited others. Not so much avoiding rat-runs, but increasing usage of lightly loaded routes.
Satnav has rather defeated that, unless of course the sat-nav people have also been told to it, with their weighted time tables being distorted.
There is more satisfaction in shouting ‘bollocks’ to your in-car voice when picking your own route than saying it to a static sign.
@Paying Guest
Interesting – perhaps I just like the road across Salisbury Plain, but when we had a relative in Devizes we always took the routes via Amesbury (Stonehenge) or Avebury – except once, when we got totally lost on the A342 in Upavon.
But my point was this sign https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2138013,-1.5296964,3a,75y,95.61h,80.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUy0YGRk2OO_MkrMZFfOAxw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656, which is seen as you approach Andover FROM THE WEST (i.e from the Amesbury direction. And from Amesbury you would certainly not go via Andover to get to Devizes)
Likewise here
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5893253,0.5593649,3a,15y,165.67h,77.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s589CS1eVQCea156n0GSPNw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
approaching Basildon on the A130. The A127 signposted London will take you to Gallows Corner and thus into London on the A12 – but if you wanted to enter London on the A12 you could have joined the A12 at the previous junction, back at Chelmsford. No mention that by following “Canvey Island” you will very shortly get to the A13 which is just as good a route, if not better, into London.
(incidentally, on that shot, either the GSV car has something seriously wrong with its suspension, or it’s a motorcycle!)
Timbeau, You are assuming you have come all the way from Chelmsford. You might have joined the A130 from somewhere like South Woodham Ferrers. Yes, both ways go to London but they can’t tell which is best for you without knowing exactly where you are heading for.
Heres an interesting one:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.3590533,-2.3768541,3a,75y,139.32h,83.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6g9bC0_MylKuaXwUZInlIQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
This is on an unclassified road in Bath at a junction with the A367, pointing to Exeter which is 100 miles away. To get to Exeter you have to pass 3 primary destinations, Shepton Mallet, Yeovil and Honiton which don’t get a mention. The A367 isn’t even a primary route, but the first one you join (A37) also goes to Dorchester and Weymouth, nearer than Exeter and which are 2 other Primary destinations not mentioned. Exeter requires another turn off onto the A303, but you would probably be going on the M5 via Glastonbury, Bridgwater and Taunton, 3 other primary destinations which don’t get a mention. Finally, after joining the A367, Exeter doesn’t get a mention at any subsequent junctions.
On a slightly different note, i’m always shocked quite how much street furniture and signage there is in London. It’s really annoying for pedestrians, and as a car user tbh (too much to possibly take in). And now it’s gone up even more with the 20mph initiatives.
I hope that now the car is beginning to lose it’s grip on the city (although not much), and new technologies emerge that we can get rid of all this metal.
I think some encouragement to move some of the info to digital would be welcome. For example, parking restrictions, bus lane times, weight limitations. Your sat nav (or similar) would indicate whether the bus lane is open right now, rather than you having to read all the small print. Eventual goal would be to make the electronics mandatory and then the signs can go.
@Anonymous – it’s not just the signage but all the other clutter such as heavy metal safety barriers, wirescapes,equipment boxes and so on, which make the public realm both visually hideous and difficult to negotiate. There’sa nice series of Osbert Lancaster sketches showing the transition from a rural “Poet’s Corner” to horrible and featureless suburban wasteland – one of the features identified there is certainly signage,but also the spread of unnecessary hard landscaping. A few – very few – local authorities are aware of the issue and try hardto tackle it, but I suspect thatm money apart, the root of the problem is the multiple agencies involved.
@Anonymous – Graham H has identified the root problems. I invite folk to spend up to 6 minutes viewing this to compare with ‘over here’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKxDSuc5Hd8
My opinion is that the signs are neater but practical and the street furniture is far less cluttered, whilst the effort is made (especially as the clip progresses) to reduce supporting columns/masts for street lighting and so on, so that the pavements are relatively uncluttered. I wonder what others think. Of course, you will see that it was hard for me to avoid another significant feature of the clip (especially impressive on hills) which I fully support but we don’t see much over here… At least WW will approve.
@Anonyminibus
The A367 is signed to Exeter from the point it leaves the A36 in Bath. If you are in Central Bath, the logical route to Exeter and places further west is A367/A37/A303/A30 not A36/A4/M5 due to having to pass through the centre of Bristol on the latter route. I agree that not mentioning Shepton Mallet is an anomaly – the bigger question for me is why the A367 is not a primary route. Incidentally, the A303 skirts some way to the north of Yeovil, but you probably know this…
The clutter created in some places (many places, perhaps) by road signs and other street furniture can be seriously detrimental to an area. Some councils – I remember Nottingham did this a few years ago – have had initiatives to review their streets and remove unnecessary items, but that can be rare. (Often, on the bus home, I find myself wondering whether Southwark really need to have three separate illuminated signs warning about the same bend on what is now a 20mph street. The number of such uncontestably removable items on London’s streets must be considerable.)
One way of doing this would be to discourage highway engineers from over-providing. There’s often a feeling that installing more than the minimum required will mitigate some marginal risk or add “padding” to make a scheme safer, but I’m not convinced it always does. For example, many traffic light installations will strictly only require a near light on the left kerb and a far light on the right kerb across the junction, but usually there’s a second near signal on the right kerb, sometimes even a secondary near signal mounted just behind the first, and often some or all of them will have an extended pole with another high-level signal mounted on top. (TfL’s signal engineers are not bad in this respect but in some parts of the country the arms race for ever more signals is astonishing.) That makes for a proliferation of columns supporting a discotheque of signals that might not all be needed. Similar things can happen with any type of street furniture, I’m sure.
I think the City has a good approach to minimising some types of furniture. Their policy is to install lighting on the walls of buildings and not on free-standing columns. Take a look at almost any street in the City and the view along it is noticeably more open and clean-looking for the absence of tall roadside columns. On the other hand, the City also has a penchant for kerbside bollards painted in black, white and red which are inexplicably numerous.
Unfortunately some boroughs are now going backwards instead of forwards – PFI schemes for street lighting can result in overprovision in an effort to ensure the contractor meets the SLA for illumination and some streets in Hounslow, Croydon and Lewisham now have forests of thick black columns where once the lights were fewer and more discreet.
@Chris Marshall
some or all of them will have an extended pole with another high-level signal mounted on top.
I have only seen these where there are two lanes, and no central island on which to place the lights controlling movement from the right hand lane – especially when there are likely to be high-sided vehicles obscuring the view of the lights on the kerbsides.
Chris Marshall,
On the streetlight proliferation, I can believe that in some places lamps on poles may have replaced lamps attached to walls but in terms of numbers I cannot think of a single road in Croydon where the number of lampposts has gone up. Because the post are higher and give out a more effective light they are placed further apart. In our road 13 posts have replaced 17 previously if I recall correctly and I think that is typical.
More serious is the failure to use the lampposts for more than one purpose. On the road next to ours we have a hail and ride bus service. Nevertheless there are occasional timetables available. These were attached to convenient lampposts and this was a very cost-effective way of providing the information. When the lampposts were replaced they were put in a different location further apart from each other. So, wait for it, they install a pole so the timetable could be displayed in exactly the same place as previously.
A further minor problem is footpaths. Under the old regime they carefully located a lamppost at the end of a footpath so they could attach the footpath sign to it. Now that the lights are located an equal but different distance apart they no longer line up with the footpath sign so we need another pole for that. I am just waiting for the complaints that the footpath sign cannot be read in the dark and the footpath needs extra lighting to compensate for losing illumination from the streetlamp that was strategically located on the adjoining pavement.
@ PoP – as I am sure you know every bus stop location has its own geographic reference. Even on hail and ride sections there are “invisible” stops known to the systems that TfL use for schedules, I-Bus etc. I was once given a detailed teach in while using the rather infrequent 389 bus round the Underhill “hail and ride” loop in Barnet. Those “timetables on poles” are all recognised by TfL’s systems and in one or two cases the “invisible” stops have become visible to passengers using Countdown. The W10 and 434 routes are two examples of the increased visibility and very good it is too. If only TfL could apply the same process to all hail and ride routes to improve arrivals predictions on hail and ride sections that would be marvellous. I am told it is a time consuming process to get right but it strikes me as one of those “easy wins” that would please the public and those who scrutinise TfL with barely any downside risk to TfL at all.
Re lamps on walls v lampposts on the street. Freestanding lampposts are very useful as a place to position Wi-Fi antennas. There were some challenges in housing enough antennas for the required coverage in the City of London due to so many wall mounted lamps. Multi-functional support structures would seem to be one way of reducing street furniture clutter.
@PoP – but in my part of Croydon they haven’t completely removed the old lampposts, they have been cut down to about 4 foot high. So there is more clutter at pavement level. (Apologies for wandering off topic)
I see the Design Museum has an installation called “50 Years of British Road Signs”, on until 25 October.
@PoP – yes, in some places, the Croydon/Lewisham lighting PFI has resulted in fewer poles, but in others more. Whitefoot Lane is a good example – Lewisham’s old streetlights were staggered on opposite sides, but the new lights are doubled up with one on each side, so there’s about twice as many as there used to be.
@Vince – the sawn-off columns will eventually be removed; in some places they’re temporarily retained for reasons to do with electricity supply but once the electricity supplier has finished the job they will be taken away.
One of the most important reasons for using lamp posts and street signs on posts rather than fixing lamps and posts to building walls has been the legislation. Until recently, unless you were in the City, you had to negotiate an agreement with each building owner that you wanted to put a lamp/sign on. There was no way to force the issue and clearly building owners could demand unreasonable levels of ransom. It was never (or only very rarely) possible to get sufficient agreements without disproportionate cost and effort. A new London Local Authorities Act has now changed the rules, and gives highway authorities the powers to serve a notice on building owners (unless they are a West End Theatre) that they intend to place a lamp/sign on the building and it’s now for the building owner to go to court to claim compensation for damage. Over time I think this will make a big difference.
Thank you quinlet.
How does this relate to the street name signage attached to buildings? Is it dealt with under a different Act?
@ Quinlet – that is an interesting change in approach. Did the City of London have special rules that allowed its different approach in the Square Mile? I shall now have to pay more attention to the design of streets in the City – I’d never noticed the relative lack of lamp posts.
That makes for a proliferation of columns supporting a discotheque of signals that might not all be needed.
Like THIS do you mean?
WW
The City is unlike any other local authority in the UK,and is often specifically excepted from the Acts which govern the others.A semi-detached part of the UK…more like a Crown Dependency than a mere Borough Council….
@Slugabed – then there are the Inns of Court, not even in any borough or the City. Nearer to topic, the Savoy appears to be a (the only ?) place where cars drive on the right in the UK, but this may be a quirk of traffic management on private property rather than something rooted in a legal difference.
To correct myself- I meant specifically the Inner and Middle Temple; rather than all Inns of Court (Grays Inn, Thavy’s Inn and so on, are within the local authority area)
GH
I thought the Order of Poor Knights of Christ & the Temple of Solomon was abolished, on the orders of Philip le Bel, who needed their money, on Friday, 13th October, 1307. [ Hence the origin of the superstition & “unlucky for some” ]
However, you seem to be suggesting that some fragment of their authority still remains in the main “Temple”
@long branch mike
This Act affects all street signs, including street names and these, together with lamp columns, are likely to be where the biggest impact takes place.
@WW
The City had its own previous Act of Parliament (lost in the mists of time) and the London Local Authorities Act largely drew on this to apply it to the rest of London.
London Councils has just agreed the guidance that was required under the Act, so I would expect to start to see it used quite soon. As Graham H says, the Inner and Middle Temple are excluded, but as they do not have any public highways it’s not that much of an issue.
@greg
“Friday, 13th October, 1307. [ Hence the origin of the superstition & “unlucky for some””]
I understood the origin of Paraskevidekatriaphobia to be a C19 recognition of the double whammy of the number present at the Last Supper, and the day of the week of the crucifixion
There may also be a connection with the death of Rossini on that date in November 1868, shortly after his eighteenth birthday – having been born on Leap Year day 1792 the calendar would be of particular interest.
Dragging the subject vaguely back on topic, I know of no official passing-over of particular numbers for roads (there is an A13 and an A666), although 666 was withheld from issue on number plates for some years and apparently people averse to “13” number plates a couple of years ago were allowed to have the previous issue (62) instead. But on the GN&CR, car No 13 was renumbered as No 8 after a fatal accident.
@Greg T – I’m not sure of the origins of the Inner and Middle Temple’s privileges (there used to be a number of such special jurisdictions – Norton Folgate, for example – most of which were tidied away in successive C19 local government reforms ). The two Temple jurisdictions are the last remains within London; although they are not Highways authorities (and many of their local government functions are delegated back to the City), they are rating authorities in their own right . [Wandering well offtopic- sorry – this had amusing consequences when I had to step into the GLC’s shoes as the precepting body to pay for LRT – I asked each rating authority in London for their estimate of a penny rate; a typical large borough such as Croydon came in,in those days at about £300k. But then so did the Middle Temple… ? …. Ah,silly me replied their Treasurer, I got the decimal point wrong … (by two places indeed).]
@Graham H
See also parts of Russell Lane N11 where markings mandate driving on the right. By the way, the multi storey car parks at Wood Green Shopping City were designed and built for LB Haringey with entrances at second storey level. The entry ramps and internal layout were all based on the “keep right” concept. This was the result of the following assumptions:
1. The High Road would be pedestrianised and traffic diverted to a parallel elevated road.
2. The UK was expected to change to driving on the right.
We are now over 40 years on and neither has come to pass.
@Graham H
See also the entrance ramps to Hammersmith Bus Station.
@Nameless – one wonders what the statutory authority for such markings would be.
@Westville13 – that may be possible, like the Savoy, because it’s on private property and so not covered by existing Highways legislation and signage?
I am all for keeping a few “heritage” revamped signs of the old style, but would be good to at least keep to the original and authentic font. The Sydenham High Street example shown is neither particularly clear to read or convincing as an imitation
There are other places where you appear to be briefly driving on the right – in the middle of the M4/M25 junction for example – but in all such cases there is a physical barrier of some kind between the flows.
The French do it (mutatis mutandis) so much better –
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@45.3596603,1.9395395,14z
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@45.9233434,6.7310778,3a,75y,61.21h,84.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKTjJno5D_84PBOp4EhoN-A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5888729,-0.0635118,3a,75y,180h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDIReuCtVuXIBorrXhfKfKw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en
….on the late-lamented Tottenham Hale Gyratory System….
@Timbeau 11:03 yesterday
US666 was renumbered because of its number. It was more due to signs being stolen by those who wanted stuff with the number on (and the downgrading of US66 leaving the spur US666 orphaned) than with people not wanting the road with the number of the beast on it.
The road signs that people in the US want to steal now are ones with 420 as the number. A milemarker in a Northwestern state that was near a college campus is now 419.9 after they got fed up with it being stolen again and again.
Closer to home, this sign in East Kent also is stolen frequently.
@Nameless 15:07 yesterday
I cannot imagine that there was a plan 40-50 years ago to switch over – at least not proposed by anyone with any remote ability to implement it. The cost of changing every junction with sliproads (on-slips and off-slips have different geometry) would have been exorbitant. Sweden only managed it 48 years ago (and Iceland 47 years ago) as they didn’t yet have those issues. Sweden soon would (and closed several tram systems on H-day as changing sides there wasn’t worth it) have those issues, and so it was a last ditch attempt that gave it enough political capital (there was strong public opposition to earlier moves) to get it done.
Russell Lane is a public road, and, where it is a dual carriageway, there are some drive-on-right cut-throughs between carriageways. These are fairly common but don’t tend to be marked so explicitly. Think of it as two U-turn links that just don’t have a barrier between them – they are drive-on-right to avoid conflicts between them.
The car park, like many others, is one-way system and that way around purely on the basis of geography – the spiral ramp begins near the entrance, and then turns to the left so that it doesn’t interfere with the entrance. As such, each floor has you drive on the right side of the car park, 90 degree turn left x2 at the end and then drive on the right side of the car park back to the spiral ramp.
Si,Timbeau
I seem to remember there being “serious” discussions….quickly stifled,for the reasons Si states….about Britain eventually switching to driving on the right,in the early/mid 70s.
This would make sense in the context of joining the Common Market (as was) and was viewed as a “long-term inevitability” by its proponents,much like Decimalisation (achieved) and Metrication (interestingly,road signs are one of the last redoubts of the Yard and the Mile).
Si
A more interesting example of attempting to predict future changes is the use on Motorways of advance junction signs at 2/3 and 1/3 of a mile instead of the traditional 1 mile and ½ mile. I can think of no other reason for this but in anticipation of a switch to metric as 2/3 and 1/3 mile would approximately equate to 1km and 1/2km.
@quinlet – it’s noticeable that the railways haven’t metricated either (nor the redtop press – “Britain swelters in the ’80s” – even I, at my great age, don’t remember Fahrenheit. (I always use the alternative system of so many Olympic swimming pools to the Belgium/Wales).
@ Si – not often LR makes me genuinely LOL but that East Kent road sign being nicked did the trick.
@ Various – I am now intrigued as to why the Temples are outside the scope of local authorities but I’ll try to look it up separately rather than force a massive diversion in debate. I am, though, amazed at some of the stuff people on here know.
I have a vague memory from about 40/50 years ago about guidance that the geometry of new roads should be designed to accommodate a possible change to driving on the right – what would nowadays be called future proofing.
But, as my memory is old enough to recall the change from Fahrenheit to Celsius, I could well be mistaken!
Re Graham H,
“it’s noticeable that the railways haven’t metricated either”
You’d better not look at the new markings on the approaches to London Bridge then!
LU uses kph speed limits.
And old signalling diagrams in chains.
@ngh – that’s going to confuse, then! @Londoner – ditto!
@WW – just don’t look at the Wiki entry for “Liberties”. [Definitely offtopic but it’s these quirky corners that make London* such an interesting place].
*Dublin and much of Switzerland highly commended
Si
The road signs that people in the US want to steal now are ones with 420 as the number.
Uh? Why? No comprende senor …..
Everyone, re “metrication”
Err … 1 chain = 22 yards = 20 metres
I started using what was then called “mks” ( metre/kilogram/second ) units in 1961
And some people STILL can’t cope!
The last hold-outs are going to be miles & PINTS ( = 568 ml )
Though I notice that some German steins, with a line @ 500ml make brim-measure Pints, what a co-incidence
Oops, pressed “send” too soon …
I’ve just noticed in the header-photograph to this article…
Above the “Sydenham” sign is a spare/extra/redundant side-bar sticking out over the pavement, apparently parallel to the “Sydenham” sign, with two loops on its’ underside.
Is it a skiamorph, or something to hang signs from (as seen on the next post) but useless, because there’s, err, a road-sign there, or what?
Re Greg,
Standard banner hanging feature – see the red banner on the lamppost behind and the unused ones on other lamp posts
Re 420 – google is your friend – I found this.
[I’m obviously old enough that I had to goggle this one]
– As far as I recall, all major roads and junctions constructed since the early 1970’s can be reversed for driving on the right without any civils. Only markings, lights and signs would need to be changed. Huge extra costs would have arisen from things like rerouting one way systems and replacing or rebuilding all public service buses and coaches.
– Metrication was practically completed by the planned date in 1975 for manufacturing, packaging and construction apart from a few exceptions – prices of loose fruit & veg, pints of beer or milk, spirit measures, gallons for fuel (until the 1980’s), wood screw gauges and miles and yards on the road. For example, timber, bricks and paving stones were all resized to metric. eg a 24 inch concrete paving slab was replaced by a new 600mm standard which could be used to replace existing paving slabs. It’s just that the public still thought in Imperial and Fahrenheit. Schools started teaching parts of the old system again. We still have the anomaly that the media report temperatures in Fahrenheit when above freezing but Celsius when below freezing – eg 90 degree scorcher or minus 5 frost.
– The information on the Wood Green car park design was the official view of Haringey Borough Highways Dept engineers in 1975 (at the time it was better known as the People’s Republic of Haringey). I saw the drawings.
A couple of points:
Lamp columns are not typically built to withstand wind loading from larger signs and panels. Everything over 0.3sqm will require at least a test, and possibly a stronger foundation, for the column. (Newer columns are often made stronger and combined with traffic signals or signs*.)
Driving on the left is not at all unusual and is a pattern we share with about 40% of the world population. The cost of converting every grade separated junction, roundabout and one-way system would be beyond eye-boggling. Look at a motorway junction on Google Maps satellite view and you’ll see that entry slips are longer than exit slips.
* According to traffic sign regulations, it is not permitted to mount any other sign on the same column as a traffic signal / light.
@ Greg Tingey/Nameless
Ah, metrication. My personal bugbear.
(Big, deep breath)
Why do we as a country persist in using imperial measurements for so many different things (road signs included)? I was born in the early 80s, and was only taught in metric measurements at school (with only a solitary lesson in Yr 7 about how to convert between imperial and metric). As far as I remember, I was never taught the numbers of imperial units that make up a mile/pint/stone etc, and didn’t (unlike my peer group, I suspect) learn them from my parents and older relatives. To this day, I struggle to remember how many yards are in a mile, let alone fathoms and chains. I think if you asked most people of my age, they wouldn’t know either (despite using them in everyday discourse)! It’s so much easier to remember and use units when they are in multiples of 10, instead of some arbitrary number.
Except for the US (which always likes to be different), Liberia and Myanmar, the rest of the world has managed to fully convert, including all other Anglosphere/Commonwealth countries. So why can’t we? Does anyone (perhaps Graham H) know why we have never converted our roadsigns and other imperial holdouts? It can’t be much more politically difficult than the momentous decision to decimalise our currency all those years ago, which AIUI went through smoothly and with relatively little opposition. I accept though there might be practical and financial constraints.
@ Anonymously 20.20
I converted to metric for detailed measuring in 1972 when it became a lot simpler for archaeological surveying than Imperial. Paradoxically it makes sense to retain Imperial units for planning buildings and structures built using these units as numerical relationships become much clearer. For volume I used metric measures from 1964 (secondary school science) except for milk and beer – where I suspect we retain the old measures for tradition and because of investment in glasses and bottles (my milk is still delivered in glass bottles). Weight metric when the shops changed over (though I note that jam is still sold in lb equivalent glass jars – investment again). Variety is fun (and pre decimal weights and measures survive in other EC countries).
Decimalisation of the UK currency was a disaster. It started in 1849 with the introduction of the florin as £0.10 (it said on it ONE FLORIN ONE TENTH OF A POUND) and it took a further 122 years to decimalise successfully!
@Anonymously – My distinct impression was that (a) the problem of metricating the highways network was deferred at the time of general metrication because people were afraid of safety issues on the day of the changeover itself, and (b) at the time when metrication might have been pushed further on the grounds that people had now become used to metric measures , Ministers were going through a Daily Mail phase. I believe that most developed countries metricated, if at all,well before the growth of road traffic.
@Westville13- I’m not sure what you had in mind when you say that decimalisation of the currency was a disaster – the answer is probably beyond moderators’ tolerance,however…
Is it true that UK road signs are only made from vinyl specified to last 5 years because more permanent finishes will only be cost effective after metrication has been completed?
@Chris H
“According to traffic sign regulations, it is not permitted to mount any other sign on the same column as a traffic signal / light”
What about examples such as “no right turn”, “ahead only” and “Except buses”?
@Nameless on the 5 year matter: Probably not. This rumour may have arisen from a misreading of this page from the UK metric association.
@ Anonymously
The USA uses its own measurements which are similar to but not always the same as Imperial. There was an earlier thread where this subject was discussed at considerable length but I think the only point worth repeating here is that it’s about time that road miles and yards were allowed to rest in peace.
@Malcolm
Thanks for link, but I first read about this in the 1980’s.
@Graham H
But that just raises more questions than it answers. If there were safety concerns, was the then recent metrication of road signs in Australia/NZ/Canada and other Commonwealth countries (plus the more recent experience in the Irish Republic) studied to see if there was a spike in road accidents at the time of changeover? It would be interesting to know if there was or not, since the changeovers I have read about (Australia and Ireland) were accompanied by huge publicity campaigns so that at changeover you didn’t have drivers attempting to drive at 80mph on a road that was previously 50mph! Mind you, if you didn’t realise there was a change coming, you probably ought not to be driving at all….
I sometimes wonder how European drivers manage to drive safely in our country, given that they know nothing other than metric and their speedometers (unlike ours) do not have a dual scale. I know there are advisory signs at the channel ports for motorists’ benefit, but they are easy to forget once you’ve driven past them. I think a recent decision to make dual labelling of height/width limits in metric and imperial units compulsory was the direct result of the increasing number of bridge strikes involving foreign lorries.
As for your Daily Mail comment…..if politicians only ever followed what a select bunch of journalists decide to say and not display leadership and a willingness to communicate the benefits, nothing would ever change in this country. We would probably still be using £/s/d!
Also, an ideal time to metricate the road signs was when the Worboys report in the early 60s led to replacement of virtually every road sign over the following 20 years to conform to the new guidelines. With a little bit of foresight and planning (not to mention heavy use of vinyl overlays!), our road signs could have turned metric for relatively little extra cost. And for the traditionalists, all those old village signposts and milestones could have remained since they are distinct enough from modern traffic signs not to cause any additional confusion (I believe there are still many of these in the Irish Republic).
And in case anyone is in need of any further persuasion:
http://www.ukma.org.uk/sites/default/files/MSA.pdf
Nameless,
“According to traffic sign regulations, it is not permitted to mount any other sign on the same column as a traffic signal / light”
What about examples such as “no right turn”, “ahead only” and “Except buses”
I think these are always integrated into the traffic light and are displayed to the right or below the light itself. I presume the regulations are referring to ad-hoc signs being put on the pole.
@Anonymously – I think your last para is the explanation. No one who has ever had the pleasure of seeing politicians up close expects them to be rational. Remember the Big Train sketch? There are plenty of examples – trivial or otherwise – where the actual experience of other countries is rejected on “Daily Mail” grounds – articulated buses would be relevant to this forum, to take a popular case.
It really, really does NOT help when even official signs get this @orribly worng.
I am particularly sensitive to road height restrictions ( my car is 2.04 metres / 6′ 8″ tall ) & all-too-often I see numbers which are all too clearly wrong – there’s one I know of that says “2 metres” but I can get under it, & another, which says: ” 6′ 6″ = 1.9 metres, see HERE
The imperial version is probably correct, because that’s a Corporation of London sign in Epping Forest & I saw a verderer’s Land-Rover discovery shear off all its roof-lights as it, err, scraped underneath!
Clear signange, indeed.
@ Graham H
I will not try the patience of the moderators…..!
@Anonymously – Graham H mentions the Big Train sketch. In case you and others did not see it earlier, then (as it’s the weekend):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7AXskSxxMk
I’m confident that Graham H ‘was there’.
I think the Daily Mail argument against metric road signs is even stronger now on the basis that metric units = European standards = the work of the devil. When we have Government Ministers refusing to accept European funding as a matter of principle (it’s much better that the taxpayer pays rather than getting more money from Europe) it can be hardly surprising that there would be strenuous opposition to metrication. The issue was, in fact, raised as part of the recent Traffic Signs Review and dropped very quickly by the Department for Transport.
‘When we have Government Ministers refusing to accept European funding as a matter of principle….’
?
@greg
“all-too-often I see numbers which are all too clearly wrong – there’s one I know of that says “2 metres” but I can get under it,”
As I understand it the rules on height signs say that the imperial and metric measures are calculated with a three inch/10cm margin, and always rounded down to the next 10cm/3″. Thus a bridge will be between 3″ and 5.999″ higher than stated, and between 10cm and 19.999cm higher than stated. As they are calculated separately, rather than one simply being a conversion of the other, two nominally 6’6″ bridges may have different metric heights posted, and vice versa.
@Graham H
“the problem of metricating the highways network was deferred at the time of general metrication because people were afraid of safety issues on the day of the changeover itself,”
Even decimal currency had a changeover period when both olD and new coins were accepted. There would be no need for an “M-day”. Provided it is clear which units are involved, both types of sign can be used n parallel. Currently all road signs except those for speed and distance specify the units. There is no reason why metric speed limit signs could not specify “50 kph” or whatever. Likewise metric distance signs could use km.
quinlet 3 October 2015 at 21:26
“I think the Daily Mail argument against metric road signs is even stronger now on the basis that metric units = European standards = the work of the devil.”
Ireland and Canada have both gone kilometric.
Alan Griffiths says “Ireland and Canada have both gone kilometric.”
As have Australia and many other places. But I don’t think that quinlet meant to imply that the connection between metric units and European standards was in any way logical or sensible, just that it is believed by the Daily Mail (and/or some of its readers, or some people who might be so stereotyped).
timbeau 3 October 2015 at 23:55
Bridge heights need to be cautiously given as resurfacing can have quite an effect. So can ballast packing under railway bridges – IIRC West Hampstead GCR bridge caught a funnel some years ago!
There have been instances of vehicles getting under a bridge on their way somewhere and getting stuck on the way back. usually because they had delivered something heavy in the meantime.
I heard of a bus driver who realised as he was passing under a theoretically-too-low bridge, that he had gone off route, but the spare centimetres had allowed him to get away with it. He decided to turn round and retrace his steps. You can guess the rest…
Wasn’t there an instance when the Felthams were sold to Leeds. As I recall, a road was resurfaced under a bridge after the route survey but before the trams were actually moved. The first delivery had to be aborted and a new, longer, route devised.
@Anonymously
As I understand it, Michael Gove has stopped the Ministry of Justice from applying for ESF for any of its programmes as a matter of principle .
Anonymous – If memory serves a few years ago Church St under the railway bridge at Edmonton Green was resurfaced. Once the work was complete the double decker buses on the W8 route could no longer get under the bridge as the carriageway depth had increased. Much scraping and digging and more resurfacing later the status quo was restored.
quinlet
As usual, the “Daily Mail” argument against metric standards is utter ( Insert as long a line of expletives as you like here … ) because it is NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH Europe. [Please would commenters refrain from making this point any more times. Malcolm]
It is called, with truth & justification:
“The International System of Units”
I even have an MSc dealing partly with that problem, – i.e. Engineering Measurement.
Grrrrr ….
timbeau
But that sign shows a fractionally larger height than was/is actually the case, oh dear – hence the shower of broken plastic & light-bulbs …
JJ & timbeau
Err it was a preserved “King” outside Paddington, because the ballast had been packed up & up & up …
Sheared off the safety-valves IIRC, which was quite spectacular
As for lorries, my wonderful Local Authority, LBWF, managed that one.
A very local delivery firm knew quite well that their vehicles could get under the Wood Street Railway Bridge see LR Flickr Pool HERE either loaded or empty.
The “authority” put “speed humps” in for the pedestrian crossing that you can see in the picture & a corresponding one at the junction on the other side of the bridge – but, because the road under the bridge was not directly altered …
You can guess what happened – large lorries are quite long & the tilt was such that one got jammed.
In the end, we, LBWF taxpayers had to compensate the lorry firm, because LBWF had ssrewed up (again).
Much like WW’s Edmonton Green example.
This one is odd –
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Queen+Elizabeth+Rd,+Kingston+upon+Thames,+Greater+London+KT2+6RJ/@51.4129404,-0.2961356,3a,75y,167.52h,82.42t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sRjADZwZ6Sa7B4JlWJ0okiA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DRjADZwZ6Sa7B4JlWJ0okiA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D51.070824%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x48760be9a9451e61:0x19b68d289fe78a8a
given that only cycles are permitted through in this direction you wonder why the height limit is necessary at all.
But stranger still, coming the other way the posted limit is 15 inches less!
@timbeau
The height limit sign almost certainly predates the cycle route and one way system. When the cycle route and islands were installed nobody bothered to take down the height limit sign. As for the difference in height limits, that’s another story (maybe something to do with clearances?)
@Greg Tingey
I entirely agree with you, but where the Daily Mail enters the door, logic, reason and facts are often the first out of the window.
@timbeau: fire engines, for example, are exempt from no entry signs, but not the laws of geometry.
Ian J,
Actually I don’t think that is true and No Entry signs is one of the exceptions that emergency vehicles are not exempt from. In practice if they could show that they had taken reasonable precautions (e.g. posting a firefighter at the far end to make sure no traffic was coming) I am sure nothing would come of it but, make no mistake, if a collision occurred the driver of the fire engine would have no excuse or mitigating circumstances to plead. In the same way, for very obvious reasons, emergency vehicles do not have an exemption from level crossing wig-wag lights.
This is also one reason why it is important for highway engineers to put up the correct sign. “Buses Only”, which is correct, technically means something quite different to “No Entry (except for buses)”, which is normally wrong, to an emergency vehicle responder – although in practice one would hope the driver would use common sense in that situation.
Ref. Bridge heights
When I worked on the old Willesden Green goods yard building houses for LB Brent in the early 80s, there was an almighty great bang from under the bridges under the Underground and Marylebone lines where they crossed Park Aveune.
A skip lorry had passed under the higher bridge and the skip raising arms hit the lower bridge. This resulted in the lorry front lifting and squashing the cab under the bridge, the driver did not survive this accident. I do not recall how the heights were marked.
@Nameless (1 October 16:35): I can’t accept the idea that “all major roads and junctions constructed since the early 1970’s can be reversed for driving on the right without any civils”. It simply doesn’t bear examination. On roundabouts, for example, the geometry of the approaches and exits are very different, and a swap to right-hand driving would lead to entrances that lead you onto the junction very fast and exits that slow you down as you leave.
Think also of all the junctions with traffic lights where there are extra turning lanes for traffic approaching the junction, so there might be three lanes at the stop line but only one or two leading away in the opposite direction, and a traffic island or central reservation separating them (such as every approach to the junction here). There is no way any junction set up in that very common manner could be repurposed for driving on the right without moving kerblines and, it follows, underground services too.
It’s certainly the case that the government considered a switch to right-hand driving in the 1960s, and there are even specific road proposals that took account of the possibility that it might happen, but it’s plainly not the case that highway engineers have been secretly preparing for it ever since.
I was expecting this to be about the wall-mounted street signs. The ones with the street name and the postcode. Which are very, very different from the sort of street signs we have over here in the US and Canada. But it wasn’t.