Motorway Services Online

Retrieved from "https://motorwayservices.ie"

Dual-site services

Two sides of a service area straddling a motorway.
An aerial view of Strensham, from an era where it was a pair of sites straddling the motorway.

A dual-site service area (commonly referred to as a twin site) is one which has an amenity building and parking areas on both sides of the road. It doesn't matter whether or not there is a footbridge between the two sides.

This layout was used by the first few motorway service areas, and was pretty much the only layout that was considered until the 1970s. By then the high costs were putting developers off. New dual-sided motorway service areas are very rare, because it is cheaper and less environmentally damaging to build single-site services.

Where there is a single amenity building that straddles the motorway, like at Keele, we do not regard that as a dual-site service area. Most professionals would argue that the fact there are two sets of car parks is enough to describe it as a "twin site", but our lists are based on the building design.

Most operators and brands will count each side of a twin-site service area separately, probably because it inflates the figures. We tend to count them as one as they function like a single-sided site.

List of dual-site services

The following British motorway service areas are of the dual-site form:

A-roads

This list shows all signposted A-road service areas. Where two sites are around a mile apart, they are counted as dual-site. Where only one side of the road is regarded as official, they are still included here. Note that it is common for the two sides of an A-road service area (and occasionally on a motorway) to be operated completely separately from one another.

Northern Ireland

Ireland (Rep. Of.)

Download full list in KML (for Google Earth and sat navs)