Abstract The long-term role of road transport infrastructure in promoting, maintaining and developing the economic system is an important one which has received relatively little research attention. The road network supports a variety of dependent economic activity and serves to integrate the economic system over space. More specifically the enhancement of the motorway network over the years in Britain will have affected the accessibility surface of the nation. This paper considers accessibility changes between the components of the urban system which are the result of postwar motorway construction. Three accessibility surfaces are considered based on various stages in the motorway building programme. A standard market potential accessibility measure is used to capture those accessibility changes which are due to the motorway effect over various periods of time and those which are due to the employment effect. The calculations are founded on the travel modes of cars and heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) based on a generalized measure of cost impedance. The results are presented for the familiar set of 19 local labour market area types based on some 280 functional urban regions and for the 11 Standard Regions based on some 852 amalgamated jobcentre office areas.
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