Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Anomalously numbered roads in Great Britain

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Anomalously numbered roads in Great Britain

In the Great Britain road numbering scheme, Great Britain is divided into numbered zones, the boundaries of which are usually defined by single-digit roads. The first digit of a road's number should be the number of the zone it occupies. If the road occupies multiple zones, then the furthest-anticlockwise zone is the correct one.

Contents

The following table lists all British roads which are anomalously numbered. Roads in bold lie completely outside their "correct" zone; all other roads run for some length in their "correct" zones but trespass into zones anticlockwise of this zone.

Motorways

Note: The motorway zone boundaries are different from the A-road boundaries shown below.

While the M25 may appear to contradict these rules as it runs through all the London-bound zones, it in fact does not; it does not run in a complete circle, starting in Zone 2, and proceeding clockwise through zones 3, 4 and 1. The A282, which completes the circle mostly formed by the M25, is anomalously numbered; as it proceeds into the A-road 1-zone (and should therefore begin with a 1).

The M271 is numbered as a spur of the M27, as opposed to the traditional numbering rules, however the M3 to Southampton came after the M271 was built and is not the zone boundary, which appears to be a straight line from M3 J8 to Exeter in some documentation.

Two clearly separate roads with the same number

  • See also http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Duplicated_road_numbers
  • See also http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/road-numbers/oddities.shtml
  • References

    Anomalously numbered roads in Great Britain Wikipedia