A BRIEF HISTORY OF AA ROUTE SERVICES 1910 - 1999

Providing members with itineraries was a service mentioned in the AA Handbook of 1911, but a fully-fledged Touring Routes Section did not become part of Arthur Allen's Touring Department until after the Great War. Whilst the earlier routes had been individually hand-written or typed, the first AA itineraries of 1920/21 consisted of duplicated sheets measuring four inches by seven inches, stapled together and put between a cover printed with 'Route' and, say, 'London to Ulverston' typed on it. On the left was a column marked 'Miles'.

On later sheets brief historical details were given in brackets, for instance 'Levens Bridge (Levens Hall, scene of ''Helbeck of Bannisdale''; topiary gardens shown on Thursday afternoons)'. Over twenty typists were employed in the Routes Department carrying out the final preparations of each route.

A 1925 route was larger, five inches by eight and three quarter inches. Total mileage of the route was typed in red on the cover:
London to Weston Underwood 67.5
An introduction headed 'Important' stated that 'the steeper hills', defined as those with a gradient exceeding one in twelve, were mentioned on the preface to each page if significant, and Ministry of Transport road numbers were given to aid direction, 'but it is to be understood that they do not always appear on the signposts and are liable to alteration without previous notice'. Each sheet had three columns for miles, the route, and the road numbers.

A Special Notice on the back stated that: 'Members are advised not to use this route a second time; road conditions may have changed and a different route may become preferable'. Applicants for routes were asked to say whether they wanted the direct route irrespective of road conditions or the best way.

In 1926 a member could receive a 'tour', as opposed to a mere 'route'. Each sheet had a running head - 'Pleasant views of the wooded heights of the Surrey hills', 'Undulating with asc. and desc. 1-10 near Newport. Scenery moderate'. The 'Tour from Gerrards Cross' of 1926 comprised a run of 744.75 miles and the member was reminded that owing to the coal stoppage the Dartmouth-Kingswear ferry (2s 6d return if under fourteen feet long) was only running for the train service.

In 1925 staff were recruited for an Overseas Routes Section, and by December it consisted of three employees, Harrington, Steel and Pring, in charge of G S Drew, with a typist Miss Rhone. These wrote out sheets describing sections of routes in France based on 'logs' sent to them by a M Youvenich who lived in Brittany, and by S Hedley, both of whom were directly employed by the AA for this purpose. Basic sections of route were printed, and other parts of a requested route were compiled by the Overseas Routes staff from maps and a set of Cyclists Touring Club guides. These were typed. When Drew died in 1929, L W Donald took over the section, with Pring as his second in command. The longest surviving member of these was Charlie Steel who was eventually in charge and retired in 1971.

By 1929 the AA was issuing over 239,000 routes, tours and day drives, introduced in 1926, plus a wide range of informative travel leaflets. A new innovation for 1931 was the introduction of strip maps alongside the text.

In 1933 over 16,000 routes a week were being issued, by 1937 545,000 routes were issued in the year and 582,000 in 1938. This level of demand continued up to the outbreak of the second world war.

After the war with the return to normality the routes services were re-established and the 31 area offices plus Belfast and Dublin were soon in full production.

An immediate improvement in 1948 was the introduction of the double sided route sheet with one direction of travel on one side and the return direction on the other. The number of individual sheets in the system was immediately halved.

On the threshold of the 1960s a new trend in the type of route information being asked for - and being itemised on the upper floors of Fanum House - was discernible. Whereas previously the great majority wanted a straightforward route from one place to another, members were now asking for more detail. Many for instance asked for 'quiet' routes avoiding main roads and congestion points, particularly at holiday times. Others began asking for itineraries to little known and out of the way coastal resorts to avoid the overcrowding they found at the more frequented places. There were increasing requests for the M1 motorway to be included even when it was out of the obvious line of route; though of course just as many were anxious to avoid it even at the expense of a longer journey time.

Every year the demand for routes was rising, the ultimate peak being reached in 1965 when 1,241,000 individual routes were prepared. At this time demand was overstretching the resources and ways of solving the problem had to be found.
The assistant manager, George Parson, and senior compiler, George Brough, suggested the idea of a series of printed maps of Great Britain each map showing by means of a unique overlay print, the best or recommended routes from a major town, city or port to 400 other towns in Britain, together with the mileage to each place from the start. The maps would be issued in response to requests for straightforward routes and it was calculated that these maps would answer a very high percentage of requests, quickly and economically. The new set of 38 maps was introduced in the summer of 1967 and proved to be quite acceptable to the majority of members receiving them. A further 8 TRM's were added over the next 2 years.

Whilst the Throughroute Maps were being prepared other economy measures were under consideration, as a result between September 1966 and January 1969 all home route production was gradually relocated to Birmingham, Leeds and Teddington. At the end of 1971 the Leeds operation was relocated to Cheadle Hulme and in January 1974 the Teddington operation was relocated to the AA's Bristol office, during this period the final economy was made which was to withdraw the strip maps from the route sheets.

For the next five years no major changes took place but the ever increasing amount of road construction led to more and more route text being created, much of which was duplicated when several route sheets used the same road. As a result of these problems and the increasing costs of printing etc, the opportunity was taken in 1980 by Ian Tyers, the manager Hotels & Information Services, to consider the introduction of new technology, particularly when Wootton Jeffreys, a computer software company specialising in Transport management technology, appeared to be able to cope with all the complexities of storing and accessing the very detailed text used.

By August 1981 a viable proposal for Home Routes was presented which eventually led to an order being placed in June 1982 for the whole project to proceed.
It was planned that the new computer system would become fully operational during 1984 and that the manual system would be centralised at Bristol prior to this, as a result the Cheadle Hulme production centre was closed at the end of 1982 and the Birmingham centre closed on 25th February 1983, from which date Bristol became the home of the national Home Routes Processing Centre.

The very first computer routes were issued to members on 1st December 1983, although the full route network was still not complete. By the end of May 1984 a workable system was available south of a line from Liverpool to Hull and by the end of 1984 70% of all routes issued came from the computer system. The computer network was eventually fully operational early in 1985 and so ended 65 years of manual route production for Britain.

Whilst all these changes were taking place in British routes, the Overseas Routes Service was not left out, again a peak of demand for Overseas Routes was reached in 1965 with some 221,387 applications being processed. Like the home route service, printing and production costs were beginning to escalate as the change of pace of road construction came about.

In 1965 a series of route books was introduced covering the principle routes from the Channel ports to popular destinations and holiday areas, these books catered for about half of all requests received. In 1969 the route books were revised so that they could be used for several different journeys.
At about this time the Overseas Routes Unit left London and was relocated to Reading in preparation for a final move in 1971 to the AA's new headquarters in Basingstoke.

By 1975 demand was down to 150,000 applications and it was decided to introduce in 1976 six Throughroute maps from the main Channel ports plus a series of area maps for the final part of a route to be marked on. A small fee was introduced and a contribution to the service of £28,000 was raised by the end of 1976. In 1979 an improved series of country planning maps was introduced along with a much improved series of Route Books and this service continued to 1987.

With the experience of the home routes computerisation available, the opportunity was taken in 1985 to assess the situation and a decision was taken in 1986 to create a computerised network using a modified version of the software used for the home route network and work was started to convert all the route text into computer data. By the spring of 1987 the first computer routes were produced and by April 1989 all the data had been input and a complete European database created.

After 22 years of separation the decision was taken in 1990 to bring together the home and overseas route services under one roof in one department. The production of overseas routes would transfer to the Bristol Office and at the same time the two network updating teams would be merged at Basingstoke and these events took place on the 15th October 1990.

In the first half of 1993 the existing computer system was replaced by a PC-based software package, combining the networks for GB, Ireland and Europe, which for the first time were each able to be viewed in map-format on the screen. A PC-system represented something of a mini-revolution for AA Routes, as it at last gave the Association the means to exploit its highly valuable routing databases in the commercial market, and the flexibility to adapt those databases to suit the needs of individual companies. Two PC products taken directly from the AA's main routeing database are Milemaster 2 the European wide package on floppy disk and Milemaster Britain on CD/Rom. Using these products, routes, journey times, distances and costs can be produced from any number of AA offices, or sold to the public or commercial companies, as well as through 3rd parties such as Tour Operators, haulage companies, car hire firms, ferry companies, etc. The data is also being used in major technical research areas, such as the development of in-car navigation systems.

Unfortunately in mid 1999 the closure of the Routes Processing Centre at Bristol was announced, the closure to take place at the end of the year. In future all route applications will be actioned by Call Handlers and without the ability to 'top and tail', provide tours, by-road routes, avoid low bridges and the other unique personalised features provided in the past - it will be the end of an era.

Don Squibb, 20 October 1999.

P.S.:
Routes Processing Centre in Bristol closed down on Friday,
17 Dec 1999. Most people have found alternative employment. Dominic and Steve Newman are setting up their own travel-planning site (www.gripmaps.com). Home and overseas routes are now also available on the AA's website.

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