Derby Urban Motorway

The Derby Urban Motorway was a proposed link from the Derby Inner Ring Road to what was then the A6 (Now the A5194) at London Road.

Route

The exact route of this road remains unclear, except it ran between the A601 and London Road. Some sort of link to the A514 at Osmaston Road was also planned. It would have had at least one junction, giving access to one of the many planned car parks.

History

The 'Derby Urban Motorway' was planned in the 1964 document Traffic in Derby, along with the ring road, an inner circulatory road and a plethora of multi-storey, underground and surface car parks.

It was planned to relive the A6 along London Road and the A514 along Osmaston Road, which were two of the city's busiest radial roads at the time. Should it have been built, part of the plan was to alter road layouts so that the only way to access the inner ring road from the A514 was along the motorway.

Other goals of the plan were to improve air quality around the Derby Royal Infirmary by removing congestion, and to provide workers (who apparently mostly lived in the North of the city) with better access to industry such as Rolls-Royce and Bombardier in the South of the city.

It is unclear how close this road ever came to being built, however during 1979 and 1980 the Derby railway cottages and Alexandra Hotel were under threat of demolition from some unspecified roadworks. Both the railway cottages and Alexandra are close to the proposed line of the road and it could be that the roadworks in question were to build this route (or some form of it). The eventual A6 Pride Park flyover could also be what of this scheme was actually built.

Motorway Status

In documents regarding this scheme it is referred to as an 'Urban Motorway', however during the 1960s and '70s it was popular to use apply this description to roads which were not actually planned to be designated as a motorway. In this instance, it is difficult to know if this was the case or not.