All roads, however big or small, need to be well surfaced to ensure the safety of all road users, and road surfacing contractors are a key part of ensuring this is the case for both small drives and byways to larger carriageways.
However, whilst some of Britain’s roads can be traced back to Ancient Rome, one of the biggest and most heavily used parts of the road network is a far more recent invention, and whilst it would create a national network of high-speed roads, was constructed to fix a relatively local issue.
In the 1930s, one of the most congested roads in Britain was the A6, particularly the route that passed through the town (now city) of Preston. The problem was even more acute during events in the North West such as the annual Blackpool Illuminations.
By 1938, the route for what would eventually become the Preston By-pass (now part of the M6) between Bamber Bridge and Broughton had been planned and designed by engineer James Drake, although it would take over a decade to gain approval from Lancashire County Council.
Part of the reason for this is that in the eyes of the law, roads could not be made that could not be used by certain kinds of traffic, which according to the law that would eventually change this included animal-drawn carriages, pedestrians, bicycles and military vehicles.
This would change in 1949 with the Special Roads Act, and the first test of the new regulations and the new concept of a car-only road would be the Preston By-pass.
Interestingly, once the plans were finally made public and a scale model was produced to showcase the new road, very few formal objections were raised, all of which were resolved personally by Lancashire County Council and the surveyor.
After nearly another decade, the by-pass opened on 5th December 1958 by then-Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at a cost of nearly £3m (£70m adjusted for inflation), and Mr Macmillan himself became the first person in Britain to travel on a motorway.
It lasted 46 days before having to be closed for emergency resurfacing work.