2023 New Year update

Happy New Year! We're back, after a brief hiatus, with news of recent developments and exciting things to come.

2022 ended quietly here on Roads.org.uk, with a three-month break in new posts. Real life has an unfortunate habit of getting in the way where hobbies are concerned, and until we can find that elusive billionaire who will provide lavish funds for this website to become a full time job, it's hard to prioritise a website about roads when bigger things come knocking on the door.

We're never away for long, though - 21 years of regular updates will pay testament to that. And even when we're not here, things are still happening in the background to keep the site relevant and up to date.

A big project, finished

Here's a bit of good news for 2023. Back in February 2020, we announced some changes to the Motorway Database. Every route has a graphical exit list, showing the arrangement of every junction, the allocation of lanes and the text on road signs, among much else. The plan was to upgrade them with new graphics, so that they were bigger, clearer, fully up to date and supported zooming and resizing when viewed on mobile devices.

That's no small feat: the database contains about 1,600 individual graphics spread across 102 routes. Each one had to be individually checked for accuracy, redrawn from scratch and then fitted back in to the exit list.

Well, on November 10th, the last route got its update and the project was complete. The very last one, incidentally, was the A8(M), partly because it had the newest existing graphics... and partly because it had one of the most difficult junctions, Baillieston Interchange, and I kept putting it off.

Elsewhere on the site, we've added a key to exit lists, explaining how all those graphics work.

Still to come

We're hopeful that normal service will now resume. What does that mean? Well, in the coming weeks and months, we're hopeful that you'll see...

• New blog posts, including a new addition to the Imperfectly Odd series and perhaps even another Out of London post. We're also hoping to take a closer look at the proposed Stonehenge Tunnel and the highway works that are ongoing to make way for HS2.
• We haven't forgotten about the missing Ringways pages. Momentum has slowed now that all the previously-existing pages are rewritten and back online, but we're hopeful that 2023 is the year the remaining ones will finally see the light of day.
• Now that the Motorway Database changes are done, we're also hoping to accelerate progress on refurbishing our Interchanges pages, which are currently a muddle of new and old.

All that is in the future, of course, but then the future is what a New Year is all about. Here's hoping the year ahead is kind to you, and that we'll have much more to share with you in the next twelve months.