The motorway concept is remarkable in that it originated so early: only some twenty years after Benz and Daimler produced the first motor cars.
Writing in the Nineteenth Century magazine in 1902, British engineer B.H Thwaite proposed the construction of an arrow-straight motorway from London to Birmingham.
In 1906 a road, virtually of motorway standards was proposed from London to Brighton though nothing came of the proposal.
Britain’s first motorway was the 13 km Preston by pass and it was opened in December 1958 at the beginning of a major new road building programme.
In the 1960s, contracts were signed for many miles of motorways and pans were laid to upgrade much of the existing network.
That policy continued into the 1980s, at a large speed largely determined by the funding allocated by the Treasury.
Motorway building spread at a brisk space. Stretches of the M60 and M6 appeared during 1960-3; the first section of the A1 (M) was competed in 1962 and the M5 the following year.
The early seventies saw a dramatic expansion, with the M4 linking London and Bristol the M40 reaching towards Oxford and Birmingham and the cities of Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield all being interconnected.
By 1980, 2286 km of motorway were in use in England alone.
Motorway in England
