I'm fascinated by the roads that never were

I might be a little odd, but these hold a great deal of fascination for me as I like to speculate how things might look if these links had been retained or constructed.

Rail travellers through Shoreham may have noticed a demolished rail bridge close to the station just near the Ropetackle development.

If your eye follows the line along the side of the River Adur, the route of the old Adur Valley railway can still be seen.

This was a railway line that ran to Horsham via Steyning, Henfield and Southwater and has now become the Downs Link cycle path.

It was closed in the 1960s during the great swathe of rail cutbacks at that time, and is unlikely ever to return, since parts of it are now buried under the A283 or housing estates.

You can borrow a video made by the county archive team (most branch libraries carry a copy) that will provide an interesting look at what the line was like during operational days.

However, it is difficult to imagine what such a line would be like now.

Presumably, it would have been electrified eventually and would now have nice new trains running along it, just as the rest of the network now has.

This is easy to imagine, but what of those towns and villages that it served?

Given the growth of places like Billingshurst, Burgess Hill and Angmering that are still served by rail lines, it is fair to assume that the likes of Steyning, Henfield and Partridge Green would be unrecognisable from the still fairly rural settlements they are.

On the road network, closures are highly unusual but unfinished projects are quite common and are often the result of accommodation of a planned scheme that is cancelled for financial, political or environmental reasons.

Locally, the most noticeable is at the end of the A27 Crossbush by-pass near Arundel.

The main road stops at a set of traffic lights above what is clearly an unfinished piece of road.

If you follow the logical line of where it is supposed to go, it is obvious that this is the much talked about Arundel by-pass (the by-pass of the by-pass!).

If completed, this would completely alter the character of the Arun Valley.

Elsewhere in the country, there are numerous examples, especially in many of the major cities, where hare-brained and expensive traffic schemes were shelved after the oil crisis in the 1970s.

A look at various internet sites will provide interesting histories of unbuilt schemes (see how the M23 should have looked at www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/m23), especially the enormous "ringway" schemes in London that would have seen thousands of houses demolished to make way for a massive urban motorway system.

Perhaps it's better to imagine the consequences of these plans than see them "in the flesh".