The rise and fall of a roads hierarchy

Phil Goodwin is professor of transport policy at the Centre for Transport and Society, University of West of England, Bristol (Phil.Goodwin@uwe.ac.uk), and emeritus professor at University College London

27 September 2007

The road hierarchy as outlined in the 1987 publication Roads and Traffic in Urban Areas

Back in 1995 the then Secretary of State for Transport, Brian Mawhinney (remember?), complained about the "dreadful muddle" of the road classification scheme and I worked on a CPRE project with Lilli Matson to suggest a better one - well, actually to suggest not having one at all, in the sense of a well-ordered hierarchy of road types, motorways at the 'top' and pedestrian streets at the 'bottom'.

It all started with the English garden city movement, itself a romantic movement founded...