A55

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WHBM
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Re: A55

Post by WHBM »

Just thinking back to the original question
Was there always a route along this general alignment using the number A55 or was this new when they built the dual carriagway.
The majority of the A55 on this section is on a new alignment since the 1970.

Everything from the Outer Chester Bypass to between Northrop and Halkyn is new alignemnt.

Short bit of dualling to Pentre Halkyn.

Long bypass of Holywell through to beyond Gorsedd is all new alignment. Both these places had their own old bypasses that look like something from the 1930s.

Just a couple of miles of dualling to near the top of Rhuallt hill was dualling.

Rhuallt hill and through to St Asaph bypass all new alignment (would the hill have been built so steep nowadays or would more earthworks have been done ?)

About a mile of dualling, then new alignment south of Bodelwyddan and Abergele bypass, and right through to Penmaenmawr.

In fact there probably isn't 5 miles of usage of the old alignent in the entire stretch.
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

WHBM wrote:The majority of the A55 on this section is on a new alignment since the 1970.
Yes.

[WHBM's list snipped]

In addition to the ones you mention, there's a bit of online dualling between Northop Hall and Northop, and two bits between Conwy and Penmaenmawr (one each side of Penmaenbach).
(would the hill have been built so steep nowadays or would more earthworks have been done ?)
I wouldn't have thought it would have made any difference. Rhuallt was one of the last sections to be done, opened about 1991. Have there been any changes in design standards re gradients since then? The DMRB says the desirable max gradient for AP DCs is 4%, which I'm sure is exceeded at Rhuallt, but it also says that in steep terrain this will often need to be exceeded. The hill is in the Clwydian Range AONB and if anything I think the trend has been towards greater tolerance of relaxation of standards in such areas - see the A470 improvements between Betws-y-Coed and Blaenau Ffestiniog.
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Re: A55

Post by AndrewH »

Do I presume that the dualled section only got as far as junction 33A at Northop for a period of time.

Looking on Google Earth, the westbound off slip seems to reveal a former dual carriageway?
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Ste_Nova
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Re: A55

Post by Ste_Nova »

AndrewH wrote:Do I presume that the dualled section only got as far as junction 33A at Northop for a period of time.

Looking on Google Earth, the westbound off slip seems to reveal a former dual carriageway?
yes, it used to come off that slip, then straight on up to "northop lights" another bottle neck

this is the old alignment looking east back down the slip, but it's not the orignal alignment

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=n ... 6,,0,11.94
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

Ste_Nova wrote:this is the old alignment looking east back down the slip, but it's not the orignal alignment

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=n ... 6,,0,11.94
I'm not sure why you say "old but not original". I think that that bit of quasi-dual-carriageway slip road is on what was the original line of the A55. It formed the western tip of a stretch that was dualled at a time when it was expected that Northop would be bypassed to the south. It was reduced to one lane when the construction of the bypass on a northern alignment reduced it to a slip road.

Looking a bit further west, there's a stretch of pre-WWII single carriageway Northop southern "bypass" that was part of the A55 until the real bypass opened circa 1990, and is now B5126/unclassified.
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Ste_Nova
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Re: A55

Post by Ste_Nova »

cause the orignal (pre 1930s) alighment is here

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=n ... 53637&z=13
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

The road which bypasses Northop Hall (or Northophall) village to the south, which was the A55 in the 1960s and 70s, and a 1-mile stretch of which is still the A55, is shown on old-maps.co.uk as having existed in the 1880s, and as having milestones labelled Chester, so I assumed it was already the main road then (probably built by Telford), and became part of the A55 when road numbers were introduced.

I mean this road.
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Re: A55

Post by Jeni »

Compare the current and old alignment of the A55 on SABRE Maps! You'll have to zoom in for the NPE maps to load.
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orudge
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Re: A55

Post by orudge »

Just looking at Bodelwyddan - did the A55 used to run through here as a dualled road, before the current bypass was built? It does rather look as though there's a carriageway missing there!
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

At one time it was intended for the A55 to be dualled online through Bodelwyddan. At one time there was a transition about here, with dual carriageway to the west and single carriageway to the east. The single carriageway ran through a reserved corridor with a wide grass verge to allow for the proposed second carriageway. At the school entrance there was a steel footbridge spanning both the single carriageway and the unbuilt one. Then it was decided to bypass the village properly. A little while after the bypass was completed, the dual carriageway was reduced to single and the footbridge was removed.

The existence of the westbound exit slip road which forms J24A is probably related to this. If the whole route had been built at once, the slip road would probably not have been built, but when the East of Abergele dualling was done, originally tying in to the west Bodelwyddan dual carriageway, the slip road was needed to enable traffic leaving the village westward to get to anywhere other than the A55 mainline.

It was many years before the straight route was given priority here.
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Ste_Nova
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Re: A55

Post by Ste_Nova »

[quote="wrinkly"]At one time it was intended for the A55 to be dualled online through Bodelwyddan. At one time there was a transition about here,

your bang on with that location, it hasn't been resurfaced so you can see the marks where the 2nd lane was painted out just before the lane drop

http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&t=k&l ... 5,,0,26.82

the same can also be seen at the other end of he village near the sharp corner by the marble church
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

Ste_Nova wrote:your bang on with that location
Well I did use my old 1:25000 map to guide me! I couldn't have remembered where it was otherwise. I have several old Pathfinder-type maps covering the A55 and A74.
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kieron
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Re: A55

Post by kieron »

wrinkly wrote:The road which bypasses Northop Hall (or Northophall) village to the south, which was the A55 in the 1960s and 70s, and a 1-mile stretch of which is still the A55, is shown on old-maps.co.uk as having existed in the 1880s, and as having milestones labelled Chester, so I assumed it was already the main road then (probably built by Telford), and became part of the A55 when road numbers were introduced.
I've been wondering about that. There were improvements made to Village Road after the war, as there's a stone with "1921" engraved on it on the Vinegar Hill section. The (1840s) first edition OS map shows both Village Road and Chester Road with the same line width.

The Revised New Series map from 1903 does show Chester Road as having been more important, backing up what you've said.

Regarding Bodelwyddan, the thing which strikes me is the junction between the road from the village and the road to St. George just north of the A55. Do you know why it looks so much like two off-slips from the road, or whether it's a co-incidence that one has almost the same shape as the slip road from the A55?

If it needed to be off-line to accommodate an embankment, I would have expected both to be on the same side of the road being diverted.
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Re: A55

Post by Jam35 »

wrinkly wrote:At one time it was intended for the A55 to be dualled online through Bodelwyddan.
Was Abergele meant to be through-passed too? It's really suspicious as you come in from the west how there's space to the left just wide enough for a dual carriageway to bash through Tesco and line up with Peel Street, which itself has some odd building lines.
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

kieron wrote:I've been wondering about that. There were improvements made to Village Road after the war, as there's a stone with "1921" engraved on it on the Vinegar Hill section. The (1840s) first edition OS map shows both Village Road and Chester Road with the same line width.
I can't remember, is the road through the village very steep? Maybe Telford bypassed it to provide gentler gradients for stagecoaches.
The Revised New Series map from 1903 does show Chester Road as having been more important, backing up what you've said.
I didn't know those maps were online!
Regarding Bodelwyddan, the thing which strikes me is the junction between the road from the village and the road to St. George just north of the A55. Do you know why it looks so much like two off-slips from the road, or whether it's a co-incidence that one has almost the same shape as the slip road from the A55?

If it needed to be off-line to accommodate an embankment, I would have expected both to be on the same side of the road being diverted.
I don't know why the diversions of St Asaph Road took the lines they did, in the NW and SE quadrants of the former crossroads with Primrose Hill. Maybe a desire to avoid the grounds of Plas Kinmel was a factor? Maybe a desire to discourage through traffic from remaining on St Asaph Road? Though if the latter, they forgot for years to adjust the priority at the A547 junction, as I remarked in a previous post.

Of course, for about five years, between the opening of the East of Abergele Improvement and that of the Bodelwyddan bypass, there was in effect a half-diamond junction with Primrose Hill, though the eastbound on-slip was two-way until near the mainline.

Jam35 wrote:Was Abergele meant to be through-passed too? It's really suspicious as you come in from the west how there's space to the left just wide enough for a dual carriageway to bash through Tesco and line up with Peel Street, which itself has some odd building lines.
No idea. The draft order for the Abergele bypass was published as long ago as 1956, so any online plan must have been earlier than that.

At Bodelwyddan most of the houses seem to be recent enough to date from after the first dualling plan. The original village seems to have been tiny and concentrated on a side road.
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kieron
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Re: A55

Post by kieron »

wrinkly wrote:
kieron wrote:I've been wondering about that. There were improvements made to Village Road after the war, as there's a stone with "1921" engraved on it on the Vinegar Hill section. The (1840s) first edition OS map shows both Village Road and Chester Road with the same line width.
I can't remember, is the road through the village very steep? Maybe Telford bypassed it to provide gentler gradients for stagecoaches.
Not sure... The bypass would certainly have saved some gradients, but only the Vinegar Hill section (where the B5125 crosses Wepre Brook) is particularly steep. And that may still be gentler than the climb into Hawarden from the east.

If you wanted to avoid steep hills, the A541 and A548 are in much better roads.

Incidentally, the turnpike was opened in 1827 according to the Community Council.
wrinkly wrote:
The Revised New Series map from 1903 does show Chester Road as having been more important, backing up what you've said.
I didn't know those maps were online!
Neither did I until I checked their list. I find it odd how there are no lines around the bridge by Queensferry, just a patch of orange in the river.
wrinkly wrote:Of course, for about five years, between the opening of the East of Abergele Improvement and that of the Bodelwyddan bypass, there was in effect a half-diamond junction with Primrose Hill, though the eastbound on-slip was two-way until near the mainline.
Where was this in relation to the modern roads? I have a 1986 OS map of the area, but it'd all gone by then, and there's nothing obvious on the online aerial photos.
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

kieron wrote:
wrinkly wrote:for about five years, between the opening of the East of Abergele Improvement and that of the Bodelwyddan bypass, there was in effect a half-diamond junction with Primrose Hill, though the eastbound on-slip was two-way until near the mainline.
Where was this in relation to the modern roads? I have a 1986 OS map of the area, but it'd all gone by then, and there's nothing obvious on the online aerial photos.
The layout was very much like what we have now, except that Bodelwyddan wasn't yet bypassed. The A55 mainline entered the village from the east, became a dual carriageway near the school, then at the point where the old road is nearest to the present A55, it switched to the present line. The present westbound off-slip at St George's existed, and part of the old road, diverted as now, served as an eastbound on-slip, but to allow exit from local houses it was two-way until it got near the mainline.

Like this.
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

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Press release:

http://gov.wales/newsroom/transport/201 ... s/?lang=en
Ken Skates keen to explore further A55 improvements

Economy and Infrastructure Secretary, Ken Skates, has today commissioned a resilience study to identify possible further improvements to the A55.

Recent years and months have seen the Welsh Government make significant improvements to the road but the Economy Secretary was keen to stress that more needs to be done in order for the road to best serve as a key artery across North Wales and beyond.

Ken Skates said:

“Last month saw the culmination of four years of imperative improvement work to tunnels on the A55, and this is alongside recent road surface improvements, flood alleviation work and urgent maintenance work.

“Following the completion of these improvements, all maintenance and improvement works for the medium to long term can now be carried out overnight, when disruptions are minimal. I’ve been clear that only emergency work will disrupt passengers during the day this summer, banning any planned daytime roadwork between J11 and the English border until September at the earliest.

“The investment in improving the condition of our roads and the major proposals we have in the pipeline to address congestion points on the network will greatly improve the travelling experience along the A55. I am, however, determined to look beyond these interventions, ensuring journeys along the A55 are as reliable as possible – delivering for locals, businesses and visitors alike. The resilience study I am commissioning will help determine how best to achieve this.

“My intention is to look again at all aspects of the road, identifying where and how best to improve the travel experience and how to minimise the frequency and impact of incidents and breakdowns. This will complement existing plans for improvements whilst continuing to ensure the disruption of roadworks are kept to an absolute minimum.

“Over 70,000 cars use sections of the A55 at peak times and this study will help the Welsh Government continue to drive improvements, ensuring the A55 copes with demand and helps facilitate a strong and forward looking North Wales economy.”

The resilience study will look at the whole network from Holyhead to Post House junction and the first stage of the work is intended to be completed late summer, feeding into the existing schedule for improvements commencing from September.
I think the Post House junction means A55/A483, though that's a couple of miles inside England.
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Re: A55

Post by Moyceyy »

wrinkly wrote:Press release:

http://gov.wales/newsroom/transport/201 ... s/?lang=en

I think the Post House junction means A55/A483, though that's a couple of miles inside England.
The Welsh Government's website still shows two more separate projects on its website too, the roundabouts at Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan (which absolutely have to go, there is no place for them on a road which is otherwise GS and has tunnels, etc.) and another Menai Crossing.
Bristol.
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wrinkly
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Re: A55

Post by wrinkly »

Moyceyy wrote: The Welsh Government's website still shows two more separate projects on its website too, the roundabouts at Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan (which absolutely have to go, there is no place for them on a road which is otherwise GS and has tunnels, etc.) and another Menai Crossing.
I think the press release is hinting at possible future projects in addition to those major ones.

Another one currently in development is a much-postponed one to upgrade the side road and property accesses on the early section of dual carriageway from Aber towards Bangor.
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