One carriageway of the old Barnet bypass still exists next to the A1(M), near South Mimms service station. There is a shared use path to one side of the old road, and this is probably a 1930s cycle track.
The Barnet bypass, part of the A1 “Great North Road,” was opened in 1927 and retrofitted with cycle tracks eleven years later.
Apart from a narrowing on Dollis and Bunns Lane bridges “it would be possible to construct cycle tracks along the whole of the length to the north of the North Circular Road,” wrote the Ministry of Transport’s divisional engineer to the chief engineer in 1937.
“This is a road where we should most certainly provide cycle tracks,” added the engineer, but he stressed: “It is questionable, and experience will prove if we are correct in constructing cycle tracks along the built-up portions of existing arterial roads.”
It’s unclear whether tracks were laid on both sides of the road.
“We can construct one cycle track in its permanent position and a temporary track on the opposite side of the road,” suggested the MoT engineer.
Ministry of Transport map of completed road schemes, 1937. Green piping marks where cycle tracks were also added.
In 1939, the Sleaford Gazette reported that the Barnet bypass was “being rebuilt with a 44ft. carriageway divided with central refuges and cycle tracks.” In the same year the Peterborough Standard said the road at this point — with adjacent cycle tracks — would be three miles in length. (The 1927 version of the bypass was fitted with 10-ft wide footways.)
The full bypass extends from Finchley through to South Mimms service station. The period cycle tracks — of which there was at least two stretches on both sides of the bypass, shows a large-scale OS map — have been partially eaten away by later widenings of the A1. The period OS map shows a one-mile stretch of cycle tracks started at Finchley/Hendon Lane, with the tracks contiguous on both sides of the road through to the start of the Watford Way, another part of the Barnet bypass. A flyover has denuded the period cycle tracks.
The Hendon & Finchley Times in August 1938 said the Barnet bypass was to be reconstructed from “North Circular-road to the Watford By Pass, widening the carriageway to 44 feet, providing refuges, cycle tracks and footways, and widening the bridge over the Dollis Brook; building a second carriageway and adding cycle tracks to the bypass from its junction east to its junction west the North Circular-road, on either side of Regents Park-road: making two 30ft. carriageways on the pass from Apex Corner to the junction with the Watford By-Pass near Page-street, including the provision cycle tracks and footways, and widening Bunns-lane bridge.”
There was also another stretch of Barnet bypass cycle track north of the present day South Mimms service station. Swanland Road is now a standalone road but it was the southbound carriageway of the Barnet bypass until the building of the A1(M). This cycle track still exists, behind bushes on Swanland Road which now looks like a rural lane rather than part of the A1.
