Does Leeds have the UK's best ring road?
Explore the Leeds Inner Ring Road - one of the UK's first urban motorways and maybe the one with the best design.
Running through the city in a series of trenches and tunnels, it stays hidden out of sight and integrates with the street network in clever ways. Unlike major urban roads in London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester, people don't complain about it much because it isn't as noticeable.
Filmed on 13 December 2003, the road might not be too different to the way it looks today, but the devil is in the detail. Twenty years ago you could still see the traces of a bold paint scheme in the Westgate Tunnel, and lots of the road's original backlit direction signs still survived - originally installed in 1964, but mostly now gone.
You might also like our guide to the Leeds Inner Ring Road.
Map extract from OS Opendata 1:250,000 Scale Colour Raster under the Open Government Licence 3.0.
What's new
The sunlit uplands
On Saturday 31 May something historic happened. The Heads of the Valleys Road was finally complete.
Grand openings
Our much-loved Opening Booklets section has two new publications for you to explore, and we’re making some overdue changes to make them easier to find and easier to read.
Silver bullet
The Silvertown Tunnel is finally open for business. One question remains: what’s it for?
Have you seen...
New Medway Viaducts
Taken over the course of two years, from 2002 to 2003, these sixteen images chart the construction of two new bridges alongside the M2 Medway Viaduct.
