Preston By-pass Preston By-pass The Preston Bypass was Britain’s first motorway. It was designed and engineered by Lancashire County Council surveyor James Drake as part of a larger initiative to create a north-south motorway network that would later form part of the M6 motorway. The bypass was opened on 5 December 1958 by the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. Nearly £3 million was spent in its construction. The original -mile () motorway ran around the east side of Preston between Bamber Bridge (now the M6, Junction 29) and Broughton (now the M55, Junction 1) and crosses over the River Ribble at Samlesbury at
M6 motorway M60 acting as a bypass around the city. South of Manchester, there is no true motorway replacement for the old road. The M1 acts as a bypass for long-distance traffic in the south, from the Kegworth junction near Nottingham, to Luton and St. Albans near London; but, it is not an alternative for local traffic as the routes diverge by more than 15 miles while passing through Northamptonshire. Across the Pennines, the old road remains the main local through-route, and long-distance fast traffic between Derby and Manchester must instead take either the A50 and M6, or M1 and M62. In