Cyclist on the Ellon Road shared-use path.
According to a 1937 newspaper report there was to be a widened road from the Bridge of Don, north of Aberdeen, to Murcar, a distance of two miles.
“The 100-foot width allows for two twenty-two-foot carriage-ways, two cycle tracks and two footpaths,” promised the report, adding that “work will start this year.”
However, a report in a different newspaper two years later said the road had yet to be widened, although once finished it would be a “paradise for motorists.”
“Imagine,” imagined the newspaper, “a roadway where high average speeds will be possible without incurring a single risk. Motorists will tell you there is no such place. Agree. But there will be, encircling the east coast of Scotland, within the space of a comparatively few years.”
Aberdeen People’s Journal said the road would have “dual carriageways, each 22 ft. wide, with cycle tracks and spacious footpaths.”
Large scale period maps show that the road, with its cycle tracks and footways, existed by the mid-1950s so it was likely to have been built in about 1940.
