Links Road, Whitley Bay

Timperley Bypass, A560, Shaftsbury Avenue, Altrincham

Shaftsbury Avenue — marked as the Timperley bypass on period maps— features wide cycle tracks and footways for some lengths but cyclists were also clearly supposed to use service roads, too, a common feature of some period cycle tracks. Read more

Links Road, Whitley Bay

“Concrete, lawns and flowers harmonise well on Whitley Bay’s new dual carriageway,” remarked a local newspaper in 1938. Read more

Coventry Bypass, A45

A 1930 Act of Parliament empowered the “Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of the city of Coventry to acquire lands and construct street works and a bye-pass road.” Land along the route of the planned Coventry bypass was “sterilised,” preventing any development but, remarked an Alderman in 1935, the road was “held up ... for various reasons, including the financial crisis and the fact that the Ministry of Transport could not make up its mind about the width.” Read more

Chester Road, Erdington

“The provision of separate tracks for cyclists are features of modern development,” wrote Birmingham’s chief engineer Herbert Manzoni in 1937, adding “they have been in use for many years ... in certain Continental countries ... and it has been found that they are much used and well favoured.” Read more

Uxbridge Road, A4020, Hayes And Southall

Until the building of the Western Avenue arterial to the north of Southall, starting in 1921, Uxbridge Road was the historic route from London to Oxford. There are two sections of period cycle tracks on Uxbridge Road. The first section is in Southall, in the London Borough of Ealing, and runs for 300 metres from almost Milford Road to opposite Holy Trinity Church, on the corner of Park View Road. This features period concrete and is kerb-protected on both sides of the road.1,085ft (300 metres). Read more

Kingsway, A90, Dundee

Starting in 1936, Scottish cycling organisations bitterly opposed the idea of “segregation” on Kingsway but today there’s a short stretch of what appears to a 1930s-vintage cycle track and adjacent footway. It’s possible that the protests prevented the creation of a greater length of cycle tracks along this arterial. Read more

Great Chertsey Road, A316, Twickenham

A “new section” of the Great Chertsey Road — a 9-mile arterial road from Chiswick to Sunbury, opened in stages from 1922 through to the 1930s — was to be constructed some time after January 1937, reported The Engineer. Read more

Tadcaster to York, A64

While there has been some remodelling of the A64 dual carriageway between Tadcaster and York the majority of it remains intact, including its period cycle tracks. Original parts of the dual carriageway — now acting as access roads to remodelled parts of the A64 — remain on the outskirts of Tadcaster and York, and they include remnants of the period cycle tracks. Read more

Heathrow, London

A mid-1950s expansion of Heathrow Airport — then known as London Airport — included a short section of 1930s-style both-sides-of-the-road cycle track and a 630-metre, double-sided “cycle & pedestrian subway” separated with barriers from the carriageways for motor vehicles. Read more

Forge Lane, Bassaleg, Wales

There is a prominent white line on the west side of Forge Lane visible on Google Earth’s 1945 aerial layer, left, and it’s likely this is the cycle track mentioned in the Western Mail in 1937. Read more

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