A74 Road

A74 Road

The A74 was a major trunk road in the United Kingdom, linking Glasgow in Scotland to Carlisle in the North West of England. The road has been largely replaced by the A74(M) and M74 motorways and now only one short stub remains.

From the 1960s onward, the A74 underwent a process of gradual conversion to motorway standard. The original section of the M74 in the mid-1960s ran from Draffen, (Blackwood) in South Lanarkshire to Hamilton, eventually being extended northwards, in two stages initially to Bothwell Bridge, and then Uddingston. Originally the M74 junctions were numbered like the other British motorways away from London, but the M74 junctions were re-numbered in 1985 in a southwards direction, to allow junctions of the first extension from its original southern termination at Draffen, southwards to Parkhead 'AA' box to be numbered. On re-numbering of the M74 in 1985 the most northern junction (at that time) was not given the number 1 to enable numbering to be in place for the northern extension from Uddingston into Glasgow. As of 2008, the M74 motorway extends southwards to the northern terminus of the M6, at the Scottish border, so that the two are now contiguous, and was extended northwards in the mid-1990s as far as the Glasgow suburb of Tollcross. In 2011 it was further extended to meet the M8. The parallel road which was the A74 has been downgraded in two sections as the B7076 and B7078.