turnpikes

turnpikes were a means of financing road maintenance by tolls charged on users, named from the gate used to restrict access. First applied to part of the Great North Road in 1663 on a temporary basis, the principle was employed from 1695 in a series of private Acts to supplant inadequate parish repair under the statute of 1555. Initially administered by justices of the peace, management by trustees was introduced in 1706, and generalized by 1714. Trusts covered on average 30 miles of road, and were a systematic response to traffic growth: most of the thirteen radial routes from London had been turnpiked by 1750, as had much of the network centred on the leading provincial towns of Bristol, Hereford, Worcester, and Leeds. ‘Turnpike mania’ 1750–72 saw the addition of 500 trusts, covering 15,000 miles, and the spread of the system into Wales and Scotland; further peaks occurred in the mid-1790s and 1820s, one-third in the industrial districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Turnpiking was limited to trunk and busy urban routes, and covered only 17 per cent of over 126,000 miles of roads by 1838.

Turnpiking represented a major transport innovation in applying use-based revenues to the increased investment that improved road quality. Mortgage finance was used from the 1750s to permit large-scale engineering work, bridge-building, and improvement of both surfaces and lines. The benefits were reflected in reduced travel times: Edinburgh, ten days from London by the fastest coach in 1754, was only four days away by 1776, and 40 hours by 1840. The cost of travel fell substantially in real terms, and road transport became up to three times more productive between the 1690s and the 1840s as a result of turnpiking. National perceptions of distance shifted fundamentally, and travel began to become a consumer good.

J. A. Chartres