On a recent trip to South Wales, I had to take the A484 past Llanelli. Llanelli seems to have a (nearly) nice bypass to the south, but it has the number B4304 rather than A484. From Swansea towards Kidwelly, this route is signed. From Kidwelly back towards Swansea the signs take traffic through the middle of town.

Does anyone know why through traffic goes through the town? (From the OS map, it looks as if there is a fair chunk of new road anyway). The B4304 has a lot of roundabouts and a 40 limit for most of it precluding it from the Sabre list of "Great Bypasses of our time", however the journey in both directions round the B4303 was smooth and unflustered with a few changes of gear for the roundabouts compared to my guess of a bit of stop and star if I'd been thorugh town.

Thanks in advance.

B4304 Ffordd Arfordirol / Coastal Route at Llanelli

Except in the case of the roundabout junctions with the A484 at Sandy (western end) and Trostre (north-eastern end), every single roundabout on the B4304 (and I count 13 of them in 4.8 route miles!) displays forward destinations of Abertawe / Swansea eastbound and Caerfyrddin / Carmarthen westbound.

I'm inclined to think that the lack of a mention of these onward destinations at the aforementioned end-junctions is more cock-up than conspiracy. (The third end-junction for through traffic, at the south-eastern extremity of the route at Berwick, is the newest and does mention both Swansea and Carmarthen).

The alternative, non-B4304, forward routes at both Sandy (from the A484) and Trostre (from the A4138) are signposted only as leading to Llanelli (town centre), so it can't really be said that through traffic is actively encouraged to go through the town. Indeed, the fact that there are signs at both Sandy and Trostre instructing vehicles weighing over 3 tonnes to go through the town centre and not use the Coastal Route (because of a weak bridge on part of the B4304) suggests that the B4304 is regarded as the default through route.

So, as I say, I think it's more a case of a lack of thoroughness in the signing at the two ends -- in all likelihood due to the fact that the route took a while to be completed end-to-end and no-one ever got around to updating the signage comprehensively at the two ends once the route was finished.

Thank you for your response.
There were rather a lot of roundabouts. I thought I'd gone to Milton Keynes by mistake!

Somebody in Llanelli likes their roundabouts... http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Llanell ... ngdom&z=17 I went around that lot on my circumnavigation of Britain (it's actually the A4214).

There seems to be a similar thing going on with the B4311 in Burry Town just west of there. Were either of these roads planned to take the A484 number, or are they just development access roads?