Chapter 4 - Road Lengths
Introduction
This chapter provides information about public road lengths by local authority, road class, type and speed limit. It also includes statistics on the amount of trunk road constructed/re-surfaced and information on the residual life of the trunk road network.
Unusual year to year changes in the reported road lengths may be due to the gradual introduction of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to calculate road lengths by the data providers - see road network section of the user guide.
Key Points
- Scotland has 57,327 km of road network.
- Seven per cent is trunk road (1% is motorway).
- Scotland has 10.4 km of road per 1,000 people compared to 6.0 km in GB.
Main Points
Road length
There were 57,327 kilometres of public road in Scotland at 31 March 2023. The trunk road network accounted for 7% of the total. Other (non-trunk) A roads represented 13% of the total. Minor roads (B and C roads, and unclassified roads) accounted for the remaining 80% of roads. (Table 4.1)
There was little change in the length of the motorway between April 2022 and April 2022. (Table 4.1)
Over a quarter of the total trunk road network, and about one-seventh of the Scottish road network, is within the area of the Highland Council. Around 10% of the Scottish road network is within the Aberdeenshire Council area and a further 8% is within the Dumfries and Galloway Council area. These three local authorities account for almost a third of Scotland’s road network. (Table 4.2)
Road Maintenance
Overall there was a decrease of 28% in the amount of trunk road that was newly constructed, reconstructed, strengthened or surface dressed in 2023-24 compared to the previous year. (Table 4.3)
In 2023-24, 20.4% of the motorway network, 15.6% of the dual carriageway and 14.1% of the single carriageway trunk road network required close monitoring of the state of the road surface. (Table 4.5 (b))
In 2023-24 the National Road Condition Indicator (RCI) showed 29% of the local authority A road network may, following more detailed examination, require some kind of maintenance (see the road network section of the user guide. For the whole of the local authority network (all road categories), about 34% may similarly require some kind of maintenance. (Table 4.6)