A64

York's connection to the wider world, linking the city - and much of North Yorkshire beyond it - to the A1(M), with an expressway of varying age and quality.

The Leeds to Scarborough road remains a trunk route to this day, but since the 1970s it has been sorely neglected. Back then it was endowed with fast dualled sections (the reason this page exists) from Leeds to York, the York bypass, then the Malton bypass. Plans to finish the job by filling in the gaps all the way to Scarborough have since gone missing.

It's not that the route doesn't need the extra capacity - most of the time it's busy, but through the summer it's a guaranteed 40mph crawl from the York bypass to the A1039 roundabout at Staxton where traffic starts dispersing along the coast. Scarborough's local paper has been doggedly campaigning for decades to get the route upgraded, but at present the only thing on the table is an extension of the dual carriageway from the end of the York Bypass to a point halfway to Malton. Even that continues to look shaky.

The result of this is that the Malton bypass is a four-mile frenzy of overtaking. In heavy traffic there are additional delays as the two busy lanes try to narrow into one again, meaning the last mile of the bypass is usually a traffic jam.

The expressway that does exist is variable in quality - from the A1, there's the 1970s Tadcaster Bypass, followed immediately by a 1930s dual carriageway flanked by footpaths and bus stops that's seen only sporadic improvements. The York Bypass follows, another 1970s road that is fast and efficient, before everything stops at the Hopgrove Roundabout.

Make no mistake, though: incomplete it may be, and the subject of widespread grumbling in a Yorkshire accent, but the A64 still opens up York and the North Yorkshire coast to business and tourism, and travellers in this part of the world may often be stuck in a jam, but they'd be lost without it.