Milton Keynes Grid Road System - The Grid Roads

The Grid Roads

The geography of Milton Keynes – the railway line, Watling Street, Grand Union Canal, M1 motorway – sets up a very strong north-south axis. If you've got to build a city between (them) it is very natural to take a pen and draw the rungs of a ladder. Ten miles by six is the size of this city – 22,000 acres. Do you lay it out like an American city, rigid orthogonal from side to side? Being more sensitive in 1966-7, the designers decided that the grid concept should apply but should be a lazy grid following the flow of land, its valleys, its ebbs and flows. That would be nicer to look at, more economical and efficient to build, and would sit more beautifully as a landscape intervention.

Professor David Lock, MBE Further information: Milton Keynes Development Corporation and Milton Keynes#Grid squares

The grid system is made up of 11 roads aligned roughly north-south and 10 aligned roughly east-west. In early planning documents, these were simply designated as "V roads" and "H roads" respectively (for "vertical" and "horizontal"); these designations have remained popular alongside the subsequent formal (conventional) names. V-roads are named as "Streets", and H-roads as "Ways". The roads are not precisely straight and aligned, and there are several places where two H roads, or two V roads, meet at a junction. The districts enclosed by the grid roads are known as grid squares.

In addition, the A5 road is a grade separated dual carriageway that is independent of the system (built to bypass the old Watling Street route), running between the grid roads but with four interchanges with the system.

Below is a list of the grid roads:

H Roads	V Roads
H1 Ridgeway	V1 Snelshall Street
H2 Millers Way	V2 Tattenhoe Street
H3 Monks Way	V3 Fulmer Street
H4 Dansteed Way	V4 Watling Street
H5 Portway	V5 Great Monks Street
H6 Childs Way	V6 Grafton Street
H7 Chaffron Way	V7 Saxon Street
H8 Standing Way	V8 Marlborough Street
H9 Groveway	V9 Overstreet
H10 Bletcham Way	V10 Brickhill Street
	V11 Tongwell Street