Automotive

Those last few miles of the M1 east of Leeds were completed in 1999. It looks for the most part like a fairly average piece of road, but one of the project's engineers describes some of the challenges that were faced.

The 1920s and 30s saw a huge roadbuilding boom in London's suburbs. Some of those roads are incredibly well known, but here are five Arterial Roads that have been almost completely forgotten.

There's almost no evidence of Liverpool's 1960's plans for an inner ring road on the ground - but the motorway that never materialised would have been astonishing. The full details on the route, and the missing part the M62, are here.

A civil engineer, working principally in the North West of England, responsible for many of the area's motorways.

Even in the 1960s heyday of roadbuilding, some people said you could never build your way out of congestion. Glasgow had plans to prove them wrong.

Today you can catch a train to France. You can even put your car on it, and be there in less than an hour. But in the 1980s, Euro Tunnel had competition - including plans to build a motorway across the English Channel.

Those funny black and yellow symbols are everywhere - and they might just get you back on track one day.

If you're on the motorway (in England at least) you might have noticed some funny blue signs down the side of the road. What are they for?

Britain's most famous anti-road protester, who shot to fame in the mid-1990s and came to represent the whole environmental movement.

The best ring road in the world? Possibly. The most frightening? Yes.

A century ago, one short memorandum issued by the Ministry of Transport laid the groundwork for a system of standardised, uniform road signs and a great deal more.

What sound at first like a pair of forgotten country lanes turn out to have had a major part to play in the history of Scotland's roads.

One of the world's biggest and most controversial schemes to manage traffic by charging for roadspace. You can drive in to London if you like, guv, but it'll cost you.

Motorways used to be really simple. Now they have electronic signals, variable speed limits, emergency lay-bys, part-time hard shoulders... Just what is so smart about Smart Motorways?

If there's trouble crossing the Channel, you'll see the lorries queuing on the M20. What is Operation Stack? Why does it cause so much trouble? And why, more than twenty years after it started, are we still using it?