MT 120/100
Trunk Road Master Plan : London-Folkestone-Dover.
| Date range | 1957-1964 |
| Location | National Archives (see all files stored here) |
| Catalogue | See entry |
| File base | Series MT, subseries MT 120 |
Context
The "Trunk Road Master Plan" series of reports were produced by the Ministry of Transport from the late 1950s onwards in order to assess the quality of postwar British roads and what to do with them.
Contents
This file covers the route of the A20 from London to Dover, including details of the then relatively new Maidstone and Ashford bypasses. The extension of the M20 west of Ditton is also discussed, replacing an earlier plan to bypass the village to the south.
East of Maidstone, a short bypass was planned around Leeds Castle (which seems to eat into the current castle grounds) and Sellinge, but otherwise there are no plans to improve the route beyond online dualling and widening. The file spends time speculating over what difference the Channel Tunnel will make on traffic, but ultimately decides the A2 can help share the load of traffic once the M2 is built (which happened a few years after the timeframe of this). (This goes some way to explaining why the M20 between junctions 8 - 9 was built years after everything else).
The file includes a strip-map of the A20 / M20 corridor with proposed bypasses along it, and a list of other planned work improvements.
People with camera copies
Ritchie Swann has a copy of the report and the maps.
