A55 Special Road: Was it ever intended to be a motorway?

[KeithW]

As a pedestrian that's an entirely legitimate path to take. You can, after all, walk onto a dual carriageway, and you're meant to face traffic. I don't see why walking on the hard shoulder of a motorway would be any more dangerous than, for instance, the A19.

Other than the fact that it is not only illegal but extremely dangerous. Between 2008 and 2013 pedestrians made up 17% of the fatalities on motorways

As for the A19 some of the busiest parts have a TRO the bans cyclists and pedestrians while NMU paths have been added.

Here for example
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.58056 ... 8192?hl=en

On the rest of the A19 such foolhardiness is rare but when Cleveland and Durham police spot them they typically offer them a lift to a safer route . We get fatalities most years just the same.

Example

Hartlepool News & Alerts
UPDATE (16th July @ 5pm) - Fatal Collision A19 Southbound
Police were called to a report of a collision involving a lorry and a pedestrian on the A19 southbound between the A689 and Billingham Bottoms (A1027) this morning at 10:50am. … See more

and another

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/no ... =operanews

[owen b]

In a £200 million motorway scheme, the perhaps £200,000 it would have cost to provide a cycle route using the existing Sleights Lane bridge is literally 0.1%.

0.1%. And that's building a proper cycleway, not just signing the alternative along Sleights Lane.

For quite likely less than 0.1% of the road users.

The £200k still needs to be justified. Building such a cycleway would cut the cycling distance by less than two miles (compared to cycling via Rainton and Hutton Grange), no more than ten minutes by bike. How many cyclists would use it? I suspect very, very few. It's not on any obvious commuting routes for cyclists, I can't see it appealing to regular leisure cyclists, you might get the very occasional long distance cyclist but I can't see it being high numbers.

[solocle]

In a £200 million motorway scheme, the perhaps £200,000 it would have cost to provide a cycle route using the existing Sleights Lane bridge is literally 0.1%.

0.1%. And that's building a proper cycleway, not just signing the alternative along Sleights Lane.

For quite likely less than 0.1% of the road users.

The £200k still needs to be justified. Building such a cycleway would cut the cycling distance by less than two miles (compared to cycling via Rainton and Hutton Grange), no more than ten minutes by bike. How many cyclists would use it? I suspect very, very few. It's not on any obvious commuting routes for cyclists, I can't see it appealing to regular leisure cyclists, you might get the very occasional long distance cyclist but I can't see it being high numbers.

Well, that's why I proffered the signage alternative, but there's not even that!

It would have saved far more money to just widen it to D3AP and call it a day. Same throughput, same speed limit for most users.

Motorway schemes are meant to separate slower road users. But, if the number of such road users is so low as to not matter, why is that being sought at all!?

It's a fairly basic principle that you shouldn't just be able to extinguish is right of way that dates back to the Romans. A reasonable diversion, yes.

And adding two miles in one place may not sound a lot - but that's quite substantial for pedestrians. For cyclists, if you have such palava in multiple locations, suddenly you might be adding 10 or 20 miles to an already long ride.

Penny pinching like this just increases opposition to future schemes. Think Twyford Down

[Chris5156]

Motorway schemes are meant to separate slower road users. But, if the number of such road users is so low as to not matter, why is that being sought at all!?

We hardly ever build motorways any more, even when it would be eminently sensible for a new road to be classified as one. There has to be a political imperative or else an A-road will be built. In this case, the objective was a safety improvement - achievable as an A-road, yes - and also connecting Tyneside to the motorway network. For the second one of those, an A-road would not do.

[solocle]

Motorway schemes are meant to separate slower road users. But, if the number of such road users is so low as to not matter, why is that being sought at all!?

We hardly ever build motorways any more, even when it would be eminently sensible for a new road to be classified as one. There has to be a political imperative or else an A-road will be built. In this case, the objective was a safety improvement - achievable as an A-road, yes - and also connecting Tyneside to the motorway network. For the second one of those, an A-road would not do.

Chronic penny pinching.

A roads are cheaper to build because you don't have to segregate slower traffic, among other factors. Even though that's desirable, for both drivers and NMUs.

The connecting Tyneside part is political - that could be achieved by saying "this is a motorway, it just allows cyclists and pedestrians". Obviously it wouldn't be a real motorway?, but a good spin doctor could smooth that out.

Take away the blue signs, paint bicycle symbols on the hard shoulder, and surely that's a safer route than the preceding A1!?

At which point a reasonable conclusion is that the blue signs are for political reasons rather than any safety purpose. Instead the route has been taken away from lawful users for political reasons.

Personally, I'd view protesting that by walking along the motorway or whatever as a morally legitimate form of protest against a political decision. Legal or not. Far less disruptive than those "go slow" fuel protests.

[Chris Bertram]

I'll keep an eye out for those "Pedestrian killed on motorway" headlines, then. And hope that it isn't a young man in his twenties from central southern England, because I think we'd all be distressed to hear of such a tragedy.

[owen b]

It's a fairly basic principle that you shouldn't just be able to extinguish is right of way that dates back to the Romans. A reasonable diversion, yes.

And adding two miles in one place may not sound a lot - but that's quite substantial for pedestrians. For cyclists, if you have such palava in multiple locations, suddenly you might be adding 10 or 20 miles to an already long ride.

How many pedestrians and cyclists used that stretch of A1 before it was upgraded to motorway? I'd venture it's as close to zero as not to justify building a parallel cycleway / path.

For pedestrians the distance saved would be negligible as from the A168 at the J49 dumbbell by Dishforth there's a minor road to Rainton and then public footpaths to J50. For cyclists there's the minor road to Rainton, then across the motorway to the A61, then to J50, which is an additional distance of 1.2 miles according to Google Maps.

I'm all for supporting legal rights of way and investing in them. Quite apart from anything else I'm a keen hill walker and sometime leisure cyclist myself. However I favour a pragmatic approach. I don't think we should be investing lots of money (ie. hundreds of thousands plus) to provide a facility which trivial numbers of people will use, and for which those who would use it have a reasonably convenient existing alternative, which in this case they do in my opinion.

[solocle]

It's a fairly basic principle that you shouldn't just be able to extinguish is right of way that dates back to the Romans. A reasonable diversion, yes.

And adding two miles in one place may not sound a lot - but that's quite substantial for pedestrians. For cyclists, if you have such palava in multiple locations, suddenly you might be adding 10 or 20 miles to an already long ride.

How many pedestrians and cyclists used that stretch of A1 before it was upgraded to motorway? I'd venture it's as close to zero as not to justify building a parallel cycleway / path.

For pedestrians the distance saved would be negligible as from the A168 at the J49 dumbbell by Dishforth there's a minor road to Rainton and then public footpaths to J50. For cyclists there's the minor road to Rainton, then across the motorway to the A61, then to J50, which is an additional distance of 1.2 miles according to Google Maps.

I'm all for supporting legal rights of way and investing in them. Quite apart from anything else I'm a keen hill walker and sometime leisure cyclist myself. However I favour a pragmatic approach. I don't think we should be investing lots of money (ie. hundreds of thousands plus) to provide a facility which trivial numbers of people will use, and for which those who would use it have a reasonably convenient existing alternative, which in this case they do in my opinion.

Cyclists AADF from the data I saw (2009 I think) was 3. Which is actually quite a lot.

I'll keep an eye out for those "Pedestrian killed on motorway" headlines, then. And hope that it isn't a young man in his twenties from central southern England, because I think we'd all be distressed to hear of such a tragedy.

I don't tend to do much protesting. When cycling LEJOG there was a missing restrictions sign at Gretna Services. I confusingly had to follow signs for A74(M) South to head north. Did I cycle onto the A74(M) in protest? No. I phoned the issue in.

But, even barring confusing signage failures, given such abominations exist, I can't say I'd never cycle onto a motorway either.

I use trunk dual carriageways when I feel the risk/reward is in my favour. No road use is risk free, after all. It can only ever be a subjective judgement call.

Legality certainly plays into that judgement, but neither do I view it as an absolute. I doubt there are many road users around who have 100% abided by the law 100% of the time.

If I were out on a long ride, trying generally to retrace the routes of Roman Britain (an endeavour that I have past form for, doing an epic on the Fosse Way)? If my GPS ran out of charge, my map soaked; and say I had a Travelodge booked at Scotch Corner, so 25 miles away?

In such a circumstance that hard shoulder would be looking extremely tempting.

On not quite such a long ride, only being London to Dorset, I encountered this.

Now, I doubled back, and found that the roadworks I'd hit didn't in fact block my route, I'd just got confused by a T junction that wasn't a TOTSO, rather, all 3 arms were "A30".

But, being pretty tired with a headwind, being so quiet that time of day, and knowing from driving that the A303 wasn't far, had I encountered a load of workmen digging up the road, I can't honestly say that I wouldn't have just gone with it. Because I might have.

[owen b]

It's a fairly basic principle that you shouldn't just be able to extinguish is right of way that dates back to the Romans. A reasonable diversion, yes.

And adding two miles in one place may not sound a lot - but that's quite substantial for pedestrians. For cyclists, if you have such palava in multiple locations, suddenly you might be adding 10 or 20 miles to an already long ride.

How many pedestrians and cyclists used that stretch of A1 before it was upgraded to motorway? I'd venture it's as close to zero as not to justify building a parallel cycleway / path.

For pedestrians the distance saved would be negligible as from the A168 at the J49 dumbbell by Dishforth there's a minor road to Rainton and then public footpaths to J50. For cyclists there's the minor road to Rainton, then across the motorway to the A61, then to J50, which is an additional distance of 1.2 miles according to Google Maps.

I'm all for supporting legal rights of way and investing in them. Quite apart from anything else I'm a keen hill walker and sometime leisure cyclist myself. However I favour a pragmatic approach. I don't think we should be investing lots of money (ie. hundreds of thousands plus) to provide a facility which trivial numbers of people will use, and for which those who would use it have a reasonably convenient existing alternative, which in this case they do in my opinion.

Cyclists AADF from the data I saw (2009 I think) was 3. Which is actually quite a lot.

Seriously? 3 cyclists AADF is quite a lot?

So I was right, less than 0.1% of the traffic volume is bikes (in fact it's more like 0.005%). So why should 0.1% of the project cost be spent on less than 0.1% of the traffic (your numbers, not mine).

Or to put it another, why spend £200k for that volume of cyclists when there is already a a reasonable alternative. Even if you spread that investment over 20 years, that's £200,000 / (3*365*20) = £200k / 21,900 = £9.13 for every bicycle movement. Why should the taxpayer pay that amount of money per cyclist to save them a 1.2 mile detour?

[solocle]

How many pedestrians and cyclists used that stretch of A1 before it was upgraded to motorway? I'd venture it's as close to zero as not to justify building a parallel cycleway / path.

For pedestrians the distance saved would be negligible as from the A168 at the J49 dumbbell by Dishforth there's a minor road to Rainton and then public footpaths to J50. For cyclists there's the minor road to Rainton, then across the motorway to the A61, then to J50, which is an additional distance of 1.2 miles according to Google Maps.

I'm all for supporting legal rights of way and investing in them. Quite apart from anything else I'm a keen hill walker and sometime leisure cyclist myself. However I favour a pragmatic approach. I don't think we should be investing lots of money (ie. hundreds of thousands plus) to provide a facility which trivial numbers of people will use, and for which those who would use it have a reasonably convenient existing alternative, which in this case they do in my opinion.

Cyclists AADF from the data I saw (2009 I think) was 3. Which is actually quite a lot.

Seriously? 3 cyclists AADF is quite a lot?

So I was right, less than 0.1% of the traffic volume is bikes (in fact it's more like 0.005%). So why should 0.1% of the project cost be spent on less than 0.1% of the traffic (your numbers, not mine).

Or to put it another, why spend £200k for that volume of cyclists when there is already a a reasonable alternative. Even if you spread that investment over 20 years, that's £200,000 / (3*365*20) = £200k / 21,900 = £9.13 for every bicycle movement. Why should the taxpayer pay that amount of money per cyclist to save them a 1.2 mile detour?

It is quite a lot for the A1. Big, knarly dual carriageway.

If the detour is decent, then ffs sign the damn thing. How much does that cost? A couple of grand?

3 cyclists in the AADF count were using the A1 over the detour. For whatever reason they had, they judged that the A1 better suited their needs. Quite possibly they didn't know the detour. If that's the case, then those 3 cyclists may well decide to use your shiny new A1(M).

Quality cycleways should be considered an integral part of any roads project, especially one that even resembles a motorway. Instead, there was once a lovely trackway called Dere Street. It got tarmaced. Then it got classified as the A1. Then, as traffic increased, it got a shiny new carriageway, and at this point it resembled a motorway. As traffic further increased, cyclists effectively removed themselves from the route, finding alternatives rather than dealing with the hellish traffic.

Those 3 represent those who could not, or would not, do that.

Building a cycle route may not look "value for money" on that metric, but those cyclists scared off the route would come back. Many more cyclists would use such a route, were it of high quality, than would use the literal A1.

And, if nothing else, it's the principle of the thing, maintaining rights of way. Because, otherwise, you'll end up with me opposing new motorway schemes, or "expressways" like the A14.

And when you have legal challenges about rights of way, and the road doesn't get built for another decade, perhaps think on't...

If you're so keen on cost/benefit analysis then the A1(M) Dishforth to Leeming scheme scored 0.9 and shouldn't even have been built.

[owen b]

Cyclists AADF from the data I saw (2009 I think) was 3. Which is actually quite a lot.

Seriously? 3 cyclists AADF is quite a lot?

So I was right, less than 0.1% of the traffic volume is bikes (in fact it's more like 0.005%). So why should 0.1% of the project cost be spent on less than 0.1% of the traffic (your numbers, not mine).

Or to put it another way, why spend £200k for that volume of cyclists when there is already a a reasonable alternative. Even if you spread that investment over 20 years, that's £200,000 / (3*365*20) = £200k / 21,900 = £9.13 for every bicycle movement. Why should the taxpayer pay that amount of money per cyclist to save them a 1.2 mile detour?

It is quite a lot for the A1. Big, knarly dual carriageway.

If the detour is decent, then ffs sign the damn thing. How much does that cost? A couple of grand?

3 cyclists in the AADF count were using the A1 over the detour. For whatever reason they had, they judged that the A1 better suited their needs. Quite possibly they didn't know the detour. If that's the case, then those 3 cyclists may well decide to use your shiny new A1(M).

Quality cycleways should be considered an integral part of any roads project, especially one that even resembles a motorway. Instead, there was once a lovely trackway called Dere Street. It got tarmaced. Then it got classified as the A1. Then, as traffic increased, it got a shiny new carriageway, and at this point it resembled a motorway. As traffic further increased, cyclists effectively removed themselves from the route, finding alternatives rather than dealing with the hellish traffic.

Those 3 represent those who could not, or would not, do that.

Building a cycle route may not look "value for money" on that metric, but those cyclists scared off the route would come back. Many more cyclists would use such a route, were it of high quality, than would use the literal A1.

And, if nothing else, it's the principle of the thing, maintaining rights of way. Because, otherwise, you'll end up with me opposing new motorway schemes, or "expressways" like the A14.

And when you have legal challenges about rights of way, and the road doesn't get built for another decade, perhaps think on't...

If you're so keen on cost/benefit analysis then the A1(M) Dishforth to Leeming scheme scored 0.9 and shouldn't even have been built.

Sure, signpost the route for cyclists, that should be vastly better value for money and I agree would be a reasonable use of public funds.

I don't accept the idea that three cyclists daily might choose to use the A1(M) for want of a parallel cyclepath. I've been driving since 1986 and I don't recall ever seeing a single cyclist on a motorway ever, let alone three just on one short stretch of the A1(M). The three cyclists per day who used that stretch of A1 have a perfectly reasonable alternative route and they are legally obliged not to use the motorway. Any attempt to justify or excuse cyclists using the A1(M) is defending the indefensible in my opinion, on both legal and safety grounds.

Nor do I accept the idea that there's a high level of cyclists who would use a cycleway on that stretch if one was provided. Sure, it might be more than three daily. It might even get into double figures, but I doubt it would be much higher. In which case it's very hard to justify spending hundreds of thousands of pounds - it's simply not value for money for the amount of usage it would get. The rights of way argument also fails in my opinion as there are reasonable alternative rights of way already in existence for both cyclists and pedestrians.

Seriously, I'm all in favour of good cycling provision, but in the real world of limited public money I think the sort of militant attitude that says I want a shiny cycle path for three cyclists per day at considerable expense despite there being a reasonable existing alternative and if I don't get it I'll threaten to cycle on the motorway is to say the least unhelpful and more likely to give the cycling community a bad name.

[solocle]

Sure, signpost the route for cyclists, that should be vastly better value for money and I agree would be a reasonable use of public funds.

I don't accept the idea that three cyclists daily might choose to use the A1(M) for want of a parallel cyclepath. I've been driving since 1986 and I don't recall ever seeing a single cyclist on a motorway ever, let alone three just on one short stretch of the A1(M). The three cyclists per day who used that stretch of A1 have a perfectly reasonable alternative route and they are legally obliged not to use the motorway. Any attempt to justify or excuse cyclists using the A1(M) is defending the indefensible in my opinion, on both legal and safety grounds.

Nor do I accept the idea that there's a high level of cyclists who would use a cycleway on that stretch if one was provided. Sure, it might be more than three daily. It might even get into double figures, but I doubt it would be much higher. In which case it's very hard to justify spending hundreds of thousands of pounds - it's simply not value for money for the amount of usage it would get. The rights of way argument also fails in my opinion as there are reasonable alternative rights of way already in existence for both cyclists and pedestrians.

Seriously, I'm all in favour of good cycling provision, but in the real world of limited public money I think the sort of militant attitude that says I want a shiny cycle path for three cyclists per day at considerable expense despite there being a reasonable existing alternative and if I don't get it I'll threaten to cycle on the motorway is to say the least unhelpful and more likely to give the cycling community a bad name.

A reasonable alternative route is worthless if you don't have confidence that you won't get lost.

I once used the A34 at rush hour from Wendlebury to Pear Tree. But the only other route I had confidence in being able to navigate was the M40 to Wheatley, and that was obviously illegal. It might well have been safer, though, than riding on an effective motorway without a hard shoulder. So excuse me if I'm a bit sceptical about the safety argument of taking away choices.

I think you're looking at the raw numbers without considering other factors. The main benefit of the motorway scheme was reducing travel time, probably by a matter of seconds. Meanwhile the 1.2 mile diversion easily adds 4-5 minutes to a bike ride at a reasonable pace, slower if you've come a long way!

And the safety improvement for cyclists would be very substantial when compared to the old A1.

So the benefits to cyclists of building a cycleway as part of the scheme would be far, far, greater than the benefit to motorists of the same scheme, and should be weighted accordingly. And add in the reduction of the risk that someone does decide to go up the A1(M).

AADF here for cyclists is between zero and two. Avoiding this section of road adds 1.6 miles. And it's a prime candidate for an expressway scheme.

Depending on the time of day, I've made different choices on how to deal with this.


When billions of pounds are spent on road building, skimping out on providing an alternative route in such instances just rubs people up the wrong way. When considering the roads budget, you're talking about change down the back of the sofa. Perhaps consider the political benefit of not alienating people to roads projects? Might have more motorways if such short sighted policies weren't pursued...

[KeithW]

When billions of pounds are spent on road building, skimping out on providing an alternative route in such instances just rubs people up the wrong way. When considering the roads budget, you're talking about change down the back of the sofa. Perhaps consider the political benefit of not alienating people to roads projects? Might have more motorways if such short sighted policies weren't pursued...

If you have to do it on every major road in the country it soon stops becoming loose change. The cost of providing an alternate route along 6 miles of A19 between the A174 and Billingham was significant and only possible because the A1032 over Newport Bridge was downgraded from S4 to S3.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.57311 ... 8192?hl=en

[solocle]

When billions of pounds are spent on road building, skimping out on providing an alternative route in such instances just rubs people up the wrong way. When considering the roads budget, you're talking about change down the back of the sofa. Perhaps consider the political benefit of not alienating people to roads projects? Might have more motorways if such short sighted policies weren't pursued...

If you have to do it on every major road in the country it soon stops becoming loose change. The cost of providing an alternate route along 6 miles of A19 between the A174 and Billingham was significant and only possible because the A1032 over Newport Bridge was downgraded from S4 to S3.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.57311 ... 8192?hl=en

And cyclists using the route jumped from under 100 to approaching 300 AADF. Urban areas are of course harder to retrofit, and the same if there's some obstacle to overcome, like a river.

But the solution in years past was just to build a great big dual carriageway, and let cyclists use it, rather than providing an alternative. To then come along and say "well, look, virtually no cyclists are using this big dual carriageway, we don't need to bother" is disingenuous at best. Admittedly, retrofitting the errors of the past would take time, which is why I'd focus on new schemes. But those mistakes are still being made - just look at A303 Sparkford to Ilchester, for instance.

[jnty]

I do tend to think that trying to prove anything with cyclist AADT numbers for a busy dual carriageway is a bit like trying to prove the need for a bridge by counting the swimmers.

This metaphor is usually used to highlight that people who need the bridge won't be swimming, but the reverse of this is that anyone who is swimming probably has little desire to use a bridge instead - and that might well be relevant here!

[KeithW]

When billions of pounds are spent on road building, skimping out on providing an alternative route in such instances just rubs people up the wrong way. When considering the roads budget, you're talking about change down the back of the sofa. Perhaps consider the political benefit of not alienating people to roads projects? Might have more motorways if such short sighted policies weren't pursued...

If you have to do it on every major road in the country it soon stops becoming loose change. The cost of providing an alternate route along 6 miles of A19 between the A174 and Billingham was significant and only possible because the A1032 over Newport Bridge was downgraded from S4 to S3.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.57311 ... 8192?hl=en

In point of fact Middlesbrough has been very proactive in building a network of shared routes for NMU traffic
https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/ ... %20map.pdf

Doing this really isn't within the remit of National Highways aka Highways England. Their job is to manage the Strategic Roads in the UK, motorways and major A roads.

Sustrans is the group who should be leading that charge.

[KeithW]

But the solution in years past was just to build a great big dual carriageway, and let cyclists use it, rather than providing an alternative. To then come along and say "well, look, virtually no cyclists are using this big dual carriageway, we don't need to bother" is disingenuous at best. Admittedly, retrofitting the errors of the past would take time, which is why I'd focus on new schemes. But those mistakes are still being made - just look at A303 Sparkford to Ilchester, for instance.

That was NOT the justification for the A19 cycle route - people on foot and cycling were being killed in increasing numbers, cycling up here after dark is unlikely to be a life enhancing experience especially when the AADF is around 100k

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.56683 ... 8192?hl=en

Note that routes avoiding the A19 were already available via the Tees Barrage and Newport Bridges but we still had cyclists on the A19.

[jnty]

Sustrans is the group who should be leading that charge.

Don't get me started on Sustrans! I find it deeply odd that the body for national cycle infrastructure provision is constituted as a quasi-independent charity. If it was a clever and successful model we'd use it for other infrastructure and bodies like local councils would have copied it widely. But we don't, and they haven't. So why do we persist in doing it this way for cycle infrastructure?

If the motorway network rollout had been led by Sustans (Motrans?) then every junction would have very nice murals alongside (but not be grade separated), there would be special gates to keep pedestrians out (which would also make the entire network inaccessible to lorries) and there would be a big debate about whether surfacing non-urban motorways with tarmac destroys their 'rural charm'.

Cycle infrastructure is always part of (or is) a road and should be planned and managed by an appropriate roads authority.

[solocle]

When billions of pounds are spent on road building, skimping out on providing an alternative route in such instances just rubs people up the wrong way. When considering the roads budget, you're talking about change down the back of the sofa. Perhaps consider the political benefit of not alienating people to roads projects? Might have more motorways if such short sighted policies weren't pursued...

If you have to do it on every major road in the country it soon stops becoming loose change. The cost of providing an alternate route along 6 miles of A19 between the A174 and Billingham was significant and only possible because the A1032 over Newport Bridge was downgraded from S4 to S3.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.57311 ... 8192?hl=en

In point of fact Middlesbrough has been very proactive in building a network of shared routes for NMU traffic
https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/ ... %20map.pdf

Doing this really isn't within the remit of National Highways aka Highways England. Their job is to manage the Strategic Roads in the UK, motorways and major A roads.

Sustrans is the group who should be leading that charge.

Sustrans are a charity. Active Travel England are a better shout, but, given that trunk road schemes are a National Highways thing, it's not unreasonable to include them.

For instance, consider this M6 countpoint, with pedal cycle traffic. Because, at the time, it was the A74.

Now look at the adjacent C road built during motorway construction.

Could this be a better route? Yes - maybe drop the speed limit, make it local access only for motorway capable traffic, such things might encourage less confident cyclists. But I found it quite delightful.

[KeithW]

Sustrans is the group who should be leading that charge.

Don't get me started on Sustrans! I find it deeply odd that the body for national cycle infrastructure provision is constituted as a charity. If it was a clever and successful model we'd use it for other infrastructure and bodies like local councils would have copied it widely. But we don't, and they haven't. So why do we persist in doing it this way for cycle infrastructure?

If the motorway network rollout had been led by Sustans (Motrans?) then every junction would have very nice murals alongside (but not be grade separated), there would be special gates to keep pedestrians out (which would also make the entire network inaccessible to lorries) and there would be a big debate about whether surfacing non-urban motorways with tarmac destroyed their 'rural charm'.

Actually some local councils have gone down the line of designating and building cycle routes
https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/ ... %20map.pdf
https://cambridge.cyclestreets.net/
https://www.itravelyork.info/downloads/ ... -route-map

Oh and we have grade separated cycle routes too.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.52336 ... ,17z?hl=en

Yet some cyclists still insisted on using the A19.

As for trucks they are a major part of why the motorways were built.