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The Development of the Arransian Expressway Network3. 1961-1974 The Labour government of Geoffrey Ingham (1911-1968), which took over from Scullion in 1961 after a narrow election victory, had rather different priorities, being more concerned with social justice than economic expansion. They were not anti-road as such, but this period saw a return to the idea of central planning that had so frustrated Scullion, and there was a slow-down in the authorisation of new schemes. The Ministry of Transport looked in detail at Brunswick’s fast-expanding and obviously successful Trunkway network. The first two years of Ingham’s government saw an economic boom and an unprecedented increase in the number of cars on Arransia’s roads, which had reached 1.4 million by 1963, thus exacerbating the country’s congestion problems. No further new Expressways were opened in these four years, but in 1965, shortly before the general election, the government authorised three major projects on the A1 route – the Kirtlebridge – Petersburgh extension, the Stainton – Hebburn Expressway, and the Coronation Parkway in Danby. This did not prevent Ingham’s administration, beset by unpopular tax rises and a balance of payments crisis, going down to a heavy electoral defeat, which brought about Scullion’s return to power. In wider political terms, this administration was a period of social conflict, as the ageing and increasingly short-tempered Scullion was very much at odds with the 1960s “permissive society”, and 1968 brought the sight – never experienced before or since in postwar Arransia – of tanks on the streets of Danby, Stainton and Hebburn to quell widespread student rioting. However, this period showed a much greater determination to develop Arransia’s road network than ever before. Scullion’s Minister of Transport, Martin Fogarty (1926-2002) was a strong advocate of new road construction, and he appointed Frank van Leer (1916-1994), a senior employee of Brunways in Brunswick, as Arransia’s first and only National Roads Director. Van Leer was a very able and visionary road designer and articulate motorway advocate, but he eventually suffered for his lack of political acumen. His first act was to authorise the expansion of the Stainton-Hebburn A1 Expressway from two lanes to three. During the four years of Scullion’s government, a number of other schemes were authorised, including the A1 from Danby to Headlam, joining up the sections of the A3 between Danby and Bainbridge, the A1 missing link from Petersburgh to Stainton, the A61 Holborough Bypass, the A5 Pentrich Bypass and, most important of all, the A2 from Danby to the Brunswick border at Laneshaw Head. Many of these ended up being delayed or shelved under Rostron, and indeed van Leer lost his job within weeks of the 1969 election as he was regarded as a political appointee. The A1 Kirtlebridge-Petersburgh section, including the upgrading of the low-standard Petersburgh Bypass, went ahead smoothly and opened in 1968. The alignment is very typical of van Leer’s work, a continuous sequence of gentle curves and almost imperceptible gradients, although it suffers from some rather brutalist concrete bridges. At the same time, the A1 was upgraded in as far as the city boundary in a similar manner to the A4 to Kelthorpe. More dramatic and controversial was the Coronation Parkway in Danby, thus named because the start of work coincided with the coronation of King Malcolm VII in 1965. This was a 3˝ mile stretch of elevated three-lane urban motorway running along the eastern side of the city centre about a mile east of the Esk. The intention was to link the A1 to the north and south of the city, and take traffic out of the centre. However, the initial plan had it simply running in to a surface street at each end. Extensions had been pencilled in, but were never even designed in detail. It was called a “Parkway” as some urban Trunkways in Brunswick had a similar designation, but in general it ran through run-down, densely-developed inner-city areas, and in fact it sliced a corner off two parks. The northern section, as far as Fisher’s Cross, opened in 1970, and the remaining 1˝ miles in 1973. It has four intermediate junctions, all of complex design, with one including a centre exit and entry. It was at the time the only Arransian road equipped with overhead gantry signs, and from the start it had a 50 mph limit, although the AMA have always argued it should be derestricted. Although always very busy, the road was widely condemned as an eyesore and a “road to nowhere” and seems to have inhibited further urban expressway building in Arransia. In the 1990s it was found that many of the reinforced concrete supports needed to be replaced, causing several years of traffic chaos. The A1 Stainton-Hebburn link opened in 1971, the scheme also including the upgrading of the original Stainton Bypass to grade-separated standard. This was 38 miles of three-lane Expressway, which lacks shoulders but otherwise is distinctly Brunswickian in appearance. Indeed it is often referred to colloquially as “The Trunkway”. The Stainton Bypass remained at two lanes as there were plans for a north-western expressway bypass of Stainton which would take some of the traffic. There was a Brunswick-style service area at Riccall which was franchised to a local operator, plus the usual rest areas. This scheme was really long overdue, but it had often been postponed as it fell into the “expensive and over-ambitious” category. If it had not been built, the heavily congested town of Riccall would certainly have received a bypass – in 1970 it was calculated that the A1 through Riccall saw the greatest number of heavy lorries on a two-lane road of any town in Arransia. This section of A1 was widely hailed at the time as a start-of-the-art road. It remains much in original condition apart from the addition of armco, and is still the only substantial section of three-lane rural Expressway in the country. Heavy lorries have always been banned from Lane 3 – for some reason, middle-lane hogging seems to be less of a problem here than it often is in Brunswick, perhaps because, if you drive continuously in Lane 2 of a two-lane Expressway, you will inevitably be flashed by faster traffic. It should be pointed out that it is recommended that Arransian expressways have three or four-foot hardstrips at each side, and a flat grassed area of at least the same width, so the lack of shoulders does not mean that broken-down vehicles are left obstructing the carriageway, and there is not the problem of drivers mistaking the shoulder for a running lane in conditions of bad visibility. Indeed Arransia has a better record than Brunswick for crashes involving broken down vehicles on limited access roads. The lack of shoulders also means that drivers are not tempted to park on them, for example to receive mobile phone calls. George Rostron’s government elected in 1969 certainly did not have an anti-roadbuilding policy, and indeed Rostron in Labour terms was more of a moderate than Ingham, whom he had succeeded following Ingham’s sudden death the previous year. The initial slowness in starting work on the schemes authorised under Scullion was to a large extent due to the lack of equipment and manpower for expressway construction as so much was tied up on the A1 extension and the Coronation Parkway. Nevertheless, it ushered in the situation that has bedevilled Arransian road expansion ever since, where there is an ever-growing list of approved schemes that are waiting in a queue for funding, meaning that in effect the case has to be made for each road twice, and in some cases the requirements change during the waiting period. After the early 1970s, sheer physical capacity was never really a problem again. In 1970, the government gave the green light to the A2 Expressway from Danby to the Brunswick border at Laneshaw Head. This needed to tie in with the construction of the dam for the Semerwater hydro-electric scheme, as the road was planned to run along the top of the dam. This road, which is regarded as van Leer’s masterpiece, opened in 1974 in a very changed atmosphere in the midst of the oil price-induced recession. While generally only two-lane, it has long crawler lanes for lorries on the upgrades. The junctions are widely spaced compared with most other Expressways, and it has a succession of grand, sweeping curves, with the gradient kept to a maximum of 1 in 24, even though it climbs to a summit of 1,424 feet above sea level, by a wide margin the highest Expressway in the country. Even now, 30 years later, it is still regarded as the “fastest” Expressway in Arransia, and the one that most road fans vote as their favourite. Its western reaches include some stunning scenery, in particular the 2300-yard section crossing the Semerwater dam, although this can be affected by high winds. Most of the road has a 30-foot grassed median, and the section over the dam has provision for future expansion to three lanes. Work was started on the A61 between Kilburn and Holborough in late 1972, but the 1973 oil crisis led to sudden cutbacks in spending plans, and all the other schemes authorised in 1969 remained on the shelf. For twenty months from November 1973, a nationwide 50 mph speed limit was applied for fuel-saving reasons, which allegedly the traffic police under Commissioner Rod McGregor (1921-1993) refused point-blank to enforce, although this was never proven. A fair number of people were convicted of doing speeds above 50 mph (generally above 70 mph), but nowhere near as many as the government expected, and it was felt that in virtually all cases it was simply being used as a proxy for a negligent driving charge. This led to a confrontation between McGregor and the Transport Minister Eileen Donaldson (1916-1998) who wanted to use the temporary limit as a lever to introduce permanent national limits. McGregor had already been criticised for a lack of zeal in enforcing the motorcycle helmet law introduced in 1972. Eventually no national limit was imposed, McGregor remained in post until his official retirement date in 1981, and the non-driving Mrs Donaldson was moved to another post prior to the 1977 Election. It is interesting to note that up to this point, Patrick Scullion had been the only Arransian Chancellor to hold a driving licence (and indeed continued to drive until a few weeks before his death in 1995 at the age of 97), but Adam Sinclair (b 1932) and all subsequent holders of the office have been drivers. The 1970s also saw the Arransian Motorists’ Association (AMA), previously mainly a breakdown organisation, become much more outspoken in support of increased roadbuilding and against the curbing of drivers’ rights. Return to Main Expressway Page
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