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I write about UK road infrastructure and history! Join me for updates and other stuff from the UK's favourite roads website, www.roads.org.uk

Graphic of a road sign, generated by the Roads.org.uk Simulator. It shows a route confirmation sign on the M5, with destinations "The SOUTH WEST, Bridgwater, Taunton, Exeter".
Close up of a blue road sign bearing the text "A6144(M)". Between the "A6144" and the "(M)" is a tiny fridge magnet that is a facsimile of the sign it's attached to
The A6144(M) sign fridge magnet, stuck to the real sign, positioned in between the much larger numbers “A6144” and “(M)”.
A sticker showing a “start of motorway regulations” sign with the number “A6144(M)” in the foreground, being held up in front of the real sign which is out of focus in the background. The two are very closely matched in shape and form.
Photograph of a sticker, key ring and magnet set celebrating the A6144(M), all wrapped in a cellophane bag. Visible are an information sheet, fridge magnet in the form of a motorway regulations sign with the motorway symbol crossed out, and a key ring in the shape of a two-way traffic warning sign.
Screenshot of a mock-up road sign from the Simulator, showing a motorway gantry sign with Welsh translations for each place name. "Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, A470" are on the left and "Cardiff (W), Bridgend M4" are on the right.
Screenshot of a graphic from the Simulator, showing a Smart Motorway gantry sign at junction 6 of the M6, Spaghetti Junction.
Photograph of a view along the wall of the Chiswick Flyover showing the taper down where the ramp used to be, highlighted by different types of mortar. Photo from Google Streetview.
Photograph of a road viaduct under construction, with beams being lifted into place to form the deck. An array of sliproads cross up and down between the top and bottom decks.
Graphic showing a red-coloured map of the M4 passing through West London, overlaid with the text "The forever bottleneck, part 2: The M4 in West London may have been bold and innovative, but if you've never built a motorway before you're bound to make some mistakes."
Black and white photograph showing a view along the Great West Road from above, with an unfinished motorway being built above the road and between industrial and suburban buildings.
Photograph of a motorway, seen from a bridge, with three lanes of traffic heading away from the camera. Two are open to general traffic but the right-hand lane is coloured red and marked as a bus lane. A blue and yellow "Megabus" is travelling in the bus lane.
Sign mounted on a tiled pillar reading “alternative route to Jubilee line & Waterloo Road” with an Underground roundel
Photograph of a road approaching a drive-on ferry in bright sunshine. In the foreground is a warning sign showing a car driving off a quayside with the text "ferry slipway 150 yds"
Silhouette of a street light against a blue sky, over which is written "London, in a different light: It was specially designed never to be noticed. And now it's disappearing, nobody has noticed its absence. It's London's own bespoke street light."
Silhouette of a modern style street light against a deep blue sky
Close up photograph of the door plate of a street light, on which an embossed manufacturer’s logo can just be made out. It is vaguely hexagonal in shape with some sort of shape inside that.
Picture from Google Streetview of a line of double-bracketed streetlights in the middle of a dual carriageway
View along a street with parked cars in the distance. The road surface is unmade, largely packed earth and gravel, and is very uneven with several potholes and tyre tracks
View along a motorway, with all traffic travelling in contraflow on the right, while the carriageway on the left has lines of cones and a single lorry in the distance
A view along a suburban road in London, with a zebra crossing in the foreground. The stripes of the crossing have extra grey paint around them to form an optical illusion that looks like the stripes are raised blocks.
Portal of a tunnel carrying a dual carriageway. The tunnel is square in shape since it is a submerged tube and not bored in the conventional way
Black and white aerial photograph of the M6/M58 interchange under construction, with looped sliproads near the camera and two huge roundabouts
A map of Clapham Junction with two huge triangular motorway interchanges overlaid on it, connected by a six carriageway road, and with other motorways radiating out in all directions. Images in this post contain OS data © Crown copyright and database right (2017).
Colour painting of a city seen from the air, with boxy modernistic buildings and lots of green space and a large motorway interchange at the centre
A BlueSky notifications button with “30+” notifications lit up
A concrete flyover structure that appears to stop in mid-air, with a road beneath and sliproads connecting the flyover to the ground. A brutalist concrete tower block is in the background
Close-up map of Blackheath, with a thick black line through the town centre labelled "Ringway 1 South Cross Route" and a dashed grey line branching off it labelled "Buchanan's bored tunnel alternative line"
Map of a section of London onto which many lines have been overlaid - thick black lines labelled "Ringway 1" and "A20(M)", and thinner red lines covering existing main roads. Junctions like Kidbrooke Interchange and St John's Interchange are labelled.
Map of London at a distant zoom level, over which have been laid a network of major roads in various colours
Outline plan of the Ringways, essentially a blank sheet of A4 paper with black lines drawn and labelled for the planned major road network and no further context
Rough charcoal sketch artist's impression of an urban motorway with cars rushing into the distance and tall concrete tower blocks on either side
A fingerpost sign, on which one panel has no border and an arrow in white outlined in black, and another has a list of destinations among which only "Chagford" has been given a blue border
Extract from a map showing an unbuilt urban motorway through the South East London suburb of Mottingham. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights (2017) used under the terms of the Open Government Licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
Black and white photograph of a deep rock cutting with a new unsurfaced motorway passing through it. A piece of earthmoving equipment and a small vintage car are visible
3D drawing of a four level stack interchange against a green background
View of a cable-stayed bridge as seen from the water below
Artist's rendering of a long cable stayed bridge stretching away into the distance over a choppy sea with a yellow sailing boat in the foreground and a cargo ship away on the horizon
A blue sign reading "SOUTH WALES, London, M49" points down an empty sliproad towards a motorway
Photograph of a car travelling around a sharp left-hand bend with several yellow-bordered chevron signs marking the turn
Black and white aerial photograph of a large motorway interchange nearing completion. One arm travels away into the distance where it almost immediately enters the suburbs, passing between houses and factories
Archive photograph from the early 1960s of a small urban roundabout that has locked up, with a continuous line of cars around the junction and none of the traffic moving
A car travels on an unfinished motorway. In the distance there are construction workers and plant on the incomplete carriageway of a bridge
A view of a motorway from an overpass. A bus travels down a red-painted bus lane on the right hand side of a three-lane motorway
A muddy building site runs alongside a canal in what is clearly an urban landscape. There is the tall brick chimney of a former mill to the left
Aerial photograph of a motorway construction site, with two bridges built over an open motorway and another even bigger viaduct half-built as a set of steel beams. Around them is a mudbath with construction vehicles scattered about
A spindly metal flyover carries cars above a roundabout with traffic circulating
A motorway interchange, with a road curving away to the right and sliproads joining and leaving on both sides. A footbridge passes over the top, suspended by cables from a tall white tower.
Aerial photograph of a newly-built motorway interchange with curving sliproads forming a Y-shaped junction amidst green countryside
Yellow rectangular road sign that simply reads "C32" in large letters. Behind it is a dry stone wall and a tree
Photograph of bridges crossing a valley. In the foreground a Victorian cast iron arch painted dark red spans the valley floor, which is a car park. Behind it two much taller concrete viaducts with sign gantries on top cross the valley, dominating the horizon
Photograph of the Severn Bridge taken from one side of the bridge footing, and the suspended bridge deck arching away into the distance. In the foreground a man walks on a cobbled slipway that leads into the water
Photograph of a cast iron fingerpost sign, freshly painted and restored, with arms pointing to Crewkerne, East Lambrook, Martock and "Hospital"
Photograph of an urban dual carriageway with traffic travelling and changing lanes as the road snakes towards the camera. An electronic sign is mounted on a gantry with the legend "Ring Road, Car Parking, (M1 South, M40), Rugby (A45), Warwick (A46)" shown in various colours.
Black and white aerial photograph of Worsley Interchange under construction, with a complex of swirling sliproads around the crossing of two motorways
Photograph of a fingerpost type direction sign. The two fingers point roughly to the left, in only slightly different directions. One reads "The North (A1)" and the other "The South (A1)".
A small car ferry, painted white and loaded with vehicles, is seen mid-stream crossing a channel of water. A beach is in the foreground and the opposite shore is wooded with houses
Photograph of old road sign with pictogram of a cow and the legend "CATTLE". The top of the post is mounted with a hollow red triangle with glass reflectors