One of the vital requirements of being a road enthusiast is that you spend all your life's spare time creating fictional roads and fictional road improvements. Some of my work, and attempts at using graphics programs, can be found here.
The only suitable route across the south cost runs through the middle of Worthing, where a bypass is apparently unjustifiable. Well, if that's the case, then this is what I'd do.
A new road attempting to relive Fareham and Gosport by providing a new connection to Portsmouth and the M27. This was actually just a test of how easy it is to create a road in Merkaartor, and the answer is 'not very'.
Tollbar End, Coventry, where two high-quality roads combine. There are plans to grade separate this, but only one road has ever been planned to become free-flow, the other will still be marginalised by a roundabout and local traffic. It seems a bit odd to me when the solution could be so simple.
The sliproads to and from the A45 east have only been included for completeness. There's more than enough space to the east of here for a new junction with the dual carriageway.
When I started on this junction I couldn't have been any older than four, and since then I've added a lot of things to it which is why it is such a state. You can tell how young I was when I started on this junction by looking at the unimaginative places names - an A32 going to a place called Alton? I wonder where I got that idea from.
This is what it looks like now I've improved it. You can't quite see it on here, but the M2 eastbound between J16 and J15 has been widened by removing the hard shoulder, because most of this section is on a river bridge. I originally drew all the lane details on this so I could design the roadworks between the two, but when it came to it I couldn't be bothered.
Heading back to reality and here we have the A23/A27 Patcham Interchange. All of the crossings here would be traffic light controlled, except for the A27 and the parallel sliproad passing over the A23. This junction lights the way for improvements to the A23 through Brighton, and local roads would have to be routed elsewhere.
Catthorpe, where the A14 is thrown in to what was a good junction. The local road junction is there so that the A14 doesn't have to become a motorway (it's not designed to be very busy), but I'm not sure why I put that extra M6 offslip in there.
Cherwell Valley Interchange, complete with an arrow over the services. This junction was fine, but gradually the A43 has been improved and it is now a major M1-M40 link, however the junction it was recently given is absolutely appalling. It causes conflicts which lead to queues on the motorway even outside of rush hour, and it was the basis of this poll. Improving it is simple: give the A43 the free-flow links it deserves.
If we were to start Britain's road network again from scratch, this is how I would do it. One of the roads would be numbered M1.
I haven't actually tried this against the land space (it's probably too far apart for this to work), but this is my idea of M1 J23a/J24/J24a: three different junctions which should all really be together. All local journeys would be directed to the exit off the central roundabout, and my favourite thing about this junction would probably be the ciractious route needed to get from the A50 (the top-leftmost road) to the A42 (the bottom-leftmost road).
My take on the A1/A17/A46 interchange at Winthorpe, near Newark-on-Trent, a junction which has seen all the roads around it be improved and is now too small and too tight. A member of SABRE rightly pointed out that with a slightly change to the alignment, you could fit in a direct sliproad from the A1 northbound to the A46 north-eastbound, and from the A1 southbound to the A46 south-westbound, saving a bridge.
The high-standard A46 stops at a busy roundabout to cross the M40, and here are three obvious options to improve it. The Highways Agency are currently building something similar to my third one, only the new road, old road and the B4463 would meet at a roundabout and the top end of the bypass would feature a right-hand entrance. No, no, no!
Severn View services have attracted a lot of criticism for being only a shadow of what they used to be, so here's how I'd plan a whole new (and much better) service area next to the new bridge.
A local problem this one, it's the Quay Street Roundabout in Fareham, where two lanes of traffic from West Fareham merge with two lanes of traffic from Gosport to create two lanes of traffic heading towards the M27. I admit it, I got a bit carried away with this one, especially with the railway viaduct, and with all the gradients and corners (compare the bend on the sliproad with that of the unclassified roads in the corner), this would end up like a version of the Tricorn Centre with roundabouts.
When a topic on SABRE drifted on to planning races around our homes towns, I proposed two, the blue one being an urban town race and the green one holding a huge amount of variety and two killer bends.
I drew this solution on paper before looking at the aerial footage, hence it is a completely over-the-top solution to a problem which (once you get rid of the services) isn't there at all. My new alternative services would probably do more harm than good too.
This could only really be justified if you were to build a new, larger service area on the site of the old Leicester Forest East services. By the way, the file is 89.5kb!
This is M6 J15, and the problem with it is that it is extremely tight, so I've tried to replace it without being too destructive.
It's the same junction, but this time I've tried to completely remove the roundabout, without too much success.
You'll have to squint to see this junction as I made the wrong thing transparent. It's the M60/M62/M602 west of Manchester. The black lines represent 'possible' sliproads.
Remember Wall services further up? Well, thanks to a thread in the forums, this is what they would look like.
Another fictional service area for a fictional world, this one's Kendon services on the M4.
Over to SimCity 4, and there would be more if Windows hadn't disabled the screenshot function for games. This stacked roundabout junction features a service station in the top-left, or the closest I got to making one without downloading a mod.
To Transport Tycoon now, and in one of my games I decided that it would be a good idea to create a scenario with a fully grade-separated motorway network on it. Here's the junction of the M2, M6 and the A27 after the nearest town grew quite a bit. Yes, this is all tied in to that fantasy land I mentioned earlier.
Another one, this is the junction of the M5 and the M2, based heavily on the M3/M27 junction in real life.
Squint and you can just make out the M2 running through the middle of our favourite town, Alton, where it runs along an urban viaduct and then heads under the railway line and along the river bridge referred to back on images 3 and 4.
Still on the M2, running through Fundingham.
The M1 curls accross the eastern corner of this city, and has a stacked interchange with the A11. When the computer builds a road over a motorway I usually incorporate it in to a GSJ of some sort.
Whilston, the country's main airport, is served by two motorways - the M4 and the M6. At the top you can see the start of an incomplete motorway and my fancypants railway junction.
This junction, my favourite of the lot, caters for the M3 as it crosses the A11, and in the picture you can see it running busier than it has ever been.
Heading back to reality, we're now once again at M6 J15. This time we've given A519 traffic a bit more space, but there would be a few problems with weaving between the exits, so I have included a C/D lane.
Now to M1 J28, with a slightly too translucent background, helping the A38 to serve as a shortcut accross the Midlands. I can't remember whether the northern end of the new flyover would be grade-separated or not.