Guide to Database Pages
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The pages of the Motorway Database are quite intuitive - go to the section for a particular motorway, and you'll find maps, photographs, opening dates and general notes. This page explains how to make the most of that information, and gives a little more detail on how the pages are assembled.
Visitors to this page might also find the Key to Exit Lists helpful.
Location map
Each motorway's page begins with a small map of the UK showing all the roads in the Database, showing motorways in blue and all-purpose roads in green. The one you have selected is highlighted in red.
If the road is particularly small, it may be highlighted by a red circle to draw attention to the relevant area. This feature is being gradually added to some older maps where the location of the road is not obvious.
The example to the right shows the M4.
Factfile
The factfile section comes immediately after the general notes and takes the form of a table. For each motorway, there is the following information:
- Start
- The start point of the motorway and, in brackets, the road it starts on. Longer motorways have an easily recognisable location ('Leeds') but shorter routes have more specific locations ('Brunswick' and 'Armley' to differentiate locations within Leeds).
- Finish
- The end point of the motorway, similar to the above.
- Passes
- A list of all the primary destinations that the motorway passes.
- Length
- An approximate length of the motorway in miles. Precise figures are difficult to come by, so the figure that appears here is averaged from various other sources.
- Terminates
- A list of any motorways that start or finish on this one. Each motorway is clickable.
- Spurs
- A list of spurs from this motorway. Note that this only includes spurs with their own unique number, and those that carry their parent motorway's number are not listed.
- Meets
- A list of any motorways that cross or otherwise connect with this one without terminating. Again, the motorways are clickable.
Images
A small number of images that help to demonstrate the 'personality' of a motorway. This is not meant to be a photo gallery documenting the route from start to finish.
This section relies heavily on visitor contributions - if you have a couple of pictures to spare, please send them in, especially where a road currently has no photos.
Construction timeline
The timeline simply documents the stages in which the motorway was built, listed in chronological order. Each section is identified by junction numbers and section names (eg. J14-15 Stafford - Hanchurch). Where there is an asterisk (*) beside a junction number, that stage finished at a temporary terminus close to a present-day junction.
The information for this section was made available by the UK Motorway Archive, compiled by Peter Hewitt and Tony Priest.
More information and links
There used to be a section called 'See Also' that listed other web pages with information on each motorway. This has been moved to fit in with the new website design (as of August 2005). The links are now placed in the right-hand side bar, near the top of the page, under 'Also on CBRD' and 'Related links' respectively.
Exit list
The main part of the page is the exit list, a graphical representation of the motorway showing junction layouts, intersecting roads, exit signage, number of traffic lanes, speed limits and distances. A key to the exit lists is available. This section answers some common questions.
Why is the exit list upside-down?
Many exit lists show south at the top and north at the bottom. When I first compiled them, I always put junction 1 at the top of the page, meaning that key routes like M1 and M6 are upside-down. Given the choice I wouldn't do it this way again, but they are too complex (and my life is too short) to rewrite them the correct way up.
Why do you show roads crossing each other at the wrong level?
On all junctions, the motorway is shown underneath and the other roads on top in order to make the junction's layout more clear. The diagrams pay no attention to whether a road goes over or under, and this makes no difference to how a junction operates.
Where does information on lane counts and speed limits come from?
All this information is from visitors to the site, and particularly from members of SABRE. Corrections to this information are welcome.
Will you add more A-roads to the Database soon?
Hopefully. The exit lists are time-consuming things to compile - usually about a day each, if it's a good length - and A-roads tend to be more complicated than motorways. I add new ones when time allows.
