The A836 passes through some of the loneliest and most sparsely populated parts of Britain, and despite having an 'A' classification, is a single track road in many places.
Our widest motorway has 17 lanes of trafficThe M61 at Linnyshaw Moss, Greater Manchester, has a whopping 17 lanes of traffic (plus eight full-width hard shoulders) running side by side. Admittedly, they are spread across several parallel carriageways – but they do all form part of the same motorway.
Answer. Answer: A motorway just relates to the A road that it's relieving pressure from. The reason there is no M7 is that the A7, which runs from Carlisle to Edinburgh has no need for a motorway to relieve it.
Britain's first motorway, the Preston by-pass, opened in 1958. Designed by Lancashire County Council under civil engineer Sir James Drake – regarded as the pioneer of the UK motorway network – it's now part of the M6. The next 10 years saw UK's network expand as hundreds of miles of motorway were built.