Our A180 is in the wrong place AND should be called something else

FASCINATING ANOMALY WILL LEAVE YOU WONDERING HOW EXACTLY THIS HAPPENED...

MANY roads up and down the country are given their name based on a specific location and zone.

The first number of any road, whether that be a motorway, A road or B road, defines which zone it falls into based on the numbering system.

However, if the road crosses multiple zones then the furthest anti-clockwise zone is the correct one.

Unfortunately though, there are a large proportion of roads up and down the country that offer some irregularities to this rule.

While the A180 is not numbered in the wrong zone, its location compared to other zoned roads means it’s not quite where you’d expect it to be.

Some roads have various reasons for being classed as ‘incorrectly named’. For example, some are at opposite ends of the country, yet strangely have the same name.

An example of this locally is the

A1243. There are two separate strips of road with the same name in both Grimsby and Great Yarmouth.

Moving on to the A180, all the other roads with the prefix A18 (with a further digit added) are located many miles away - suggesting that the Lincolnshire road infamous for its noisy surface is not in the correct place.

The other two are in the north east of England. For example, the A181 is actually in Durham, which is just under 150 miles away from Grimsby.

The other similarly named road is the A183 which passes through Sunderland and up towards Newcastle.

It is believed that the reason for this apparent anomaly is due to the A180 being an extension of the M180.

While it is not clear why the decision was made to call it this, the road has become synonymous with motorists all across our area as the main route in and out of Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

However, the question now remains, if it shouldn’t be called the A180, then what should it be named?