Roads: The New Way (1950)

Date	1950
Owned by	Steven
Type	Publications (see all artefacts)

Context

Up to the 1970s, the British Road Federation were a pseudo-think tank pushing for further investment in the road network.

This is a relatively early example of their ideas, split into several sections such as "A Modern Road System", "Roads in Cities and Large Towns", "Trunk Roads", "Motorways" and "Country Roads".

It's quite lavishly illustrated with various roads from outside the UK, and surprisingly for a book of its time, quite a number of roads from within the UK and artist impressions of what is now the M1 and M6 through various parts of England such as southern Staffordshire, northern Lancashire and Westmorland.

Overall, quite a nice publication showing the thinking of 1950 as to how the road network should be improved.

Contents of Note

• Explanation of 1950s thinking around urban roads, for example, the difference in functionality between Inner and Outer Ring Roads
• Suggestions of how motorway signage should work, nearly a decade prior to the Anderson Report
• General ideas around improvements for long-distance roads
• Suggestions as to what to be done with Class III and Unclassified roads, which uses quite a lot of words to say "basically no change"!