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Other Discussion / Re: New Travels and Stats Discussion
« Last post by si404 on Today at 03:05:49 pm »I was surprised by the highway density within London as opposed to so many U.S. cities where highways are routed around or co-routed through cities (except I guess Kentucky!).When the roads were first numbered, 101 years ago, the counties/boroughs maintained everything and classification was about how much money they'd get from the national government to look after them (Class I 'A' roads getting more per mile than Class II 'B' roads which in turn get more than other roads - and it's still somewhat the case, though isn't quite the case anymore). As such a very large and dense network formed across the country*, and continued to do so after a limited amount were 'trunked' (ie national government took over the maintenance and improvement of).
The trunk road network got greatly reduced (about half went) in the early 2000s, and now it looks like this (England-only as Wales and Scotland have their own, regional, networks that didn't go through the pareing that UK-governed England's didn't). The Red Route network (map) that TfL maintain, instead of the boroughs, is London's state-equivalent road network (it's a bit bigger than the former trunk road network inside the boundaries, though lacks the long-distance motorways that enter the regions' borders).
The only large scale declassifying of roads in any English urban area is the 'Ring of Steel' declassifying of roads in the square mile of the City of London to supposedly confuse the IRA by removing road numbers (ironically almost returning the City to its initial state of having no classified roads - something which soon changed). Even large-scale urban downgrades are rare - Winchester is noteable for getting rid of its non-peripheral A roads (they became B roads and remain a dense network) when the M3 opened.
*Even when you consider that England is nearly as densely populated (1,134.4/sq mi) as New Jersey (1,263.0/sq mi) - the densest state, and has about 1.5 times (57m) the population of California (39m), the most populated state.