page_title: Transport in London
section_title: Roads
hierarchical_section_title: Transport in London / Roads
caption_attribution_description: English: Numbers of people using different transport types in the City of London in 2017 against the road space used by that type.&#91;1&#93;
context_page_description: London has an extensive and developed transport network which includes both private and public services. Journeys made by public transport systems account for 37% of London's journeys while private services accounted for 36% of journeys, walking 24% and cycling 2%. London's public transport network serves as the central hub for the United Kingdom in rail, air and road transport.
  Public transport services are dominated by the executive agency for transport in London: Transport for London. TfL controls the majority of public transport, including the Underground, Buses, Tramlink, the Docklands Light Railway, London River Services and the London Overground. Other rail services are either franchised to train operating companies by the Department for Transport or, like Eurostar and Heathrow Express, operated on an open-access basis. TfL also controls most major roads in London, but not minor roads. In addition, there are several independent airports serving London, including Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe.
context_section_description: London has a hierarchy of roads ranging from major radial and orbital trunk roads down to minor "side streets". At the top level are motorways and grade-separated dual carriageways, supplemented by non-grade-separated urban dual carriageways, major single carriageway roads, local distributor roads and small local streets.
  Most of the streets of central London were laid out before cars were invented, and London's road network is often congested. Attempts to tackle this go back at least to the 1740s, when the New Road was built through the fields north of the city; it is now just another congested central London thoroughfare. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, new wide roads such as Victoria Embankment, Shaftesbury Avenue and Kingsway were created. In the 1920s and 1930s a series of new radial roads, such as the Western Avenue and Eastern Avenue, were constructed in the new suburban outskirts of London, but little was done in the congested central area.
  A 1938 report, The Highway Development Survey, by Sir Charles Bressey and Sir Edwin Lutyens for the Ministry of Transport and Sir Patrick Abercrombie's 1943 County of London Plan and 1944 Greater London Plan all recommended the construction of many miles of new roads and the improvement of existing routes and junctions; but little was done to implement the recommendations. In the 1960s the Greater London Council prepared a drastic plan for a network of London Ringways including the construction of the London Motorway Box which would have involved massive demolition and huge cost to bring motorways into the heart of the city. Resistance from central government over the costs, and campaigns of objections from local residents, caused the cancellation of most of the plans in 1973. By the end of the 20th century policy swung towards a preference for public transport improvements, although the 118-mile (190 km) M25 orbital motorway was constructed between 1973 and 1986 to provide a route for traffic to bypass the London urban area.
caption: Numbers of people using different transport types in the City of London in 2017 against the road space used by that type.[28]
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