TimM3-A55 wrote:
Agree, the upgraded section on the welsh side is already motorway stranded and the section on the English side is short and only missing hard shoulders. If the new section was built to motorway standard there's no reason the M56 could be extended to the A55 junction, but then there's also numerous sections of expressway that could be motorway and aren't (A2 from the M25 to M2, and A27 from the M27 to A3(M) for example).
If it stayed an A road the A56 number always looked to me with the A56 renumbered as something like A5600, I don't know the area well enough to know where the A56 currently goes though. I wounder why the Chester A55 was numbed as such, possibly when the Chester section of the A55 was built (early 90s?) it was assumed the M56 would be extended to the A55.
Of course there's a good chance if the proposed upgraded 10 years hadn't been so needlessly overblown it would of been built already.
Although there is around two miles of D4 A494 which would certainly be motorway standard before the abrupt loss of two lanes at the Dee Bridge, the proposed new route for the M56 - Flintshire Bridge - A55 link would include very little of the D4 A494.
The A494 between Shotwick and Ewloe follows a route which could have been envisaged for the M53. Traffic on the southbound M53 has to negotiate a fairly tight bend approaching Junction 5 (A41) and you can see evidence of a proposed mainline which would have continued southwards, probably shadowing the A550, at least until the Welsh border. It also explains the very sharp bend by motorway standards on the Liverpool bound carriageway just after Junction 5. The current M53 southeast of Junction 5 was initially numbered M531 and may have kept that number if the M53 had been extended at least to Shotwick.
The A55 Chester Southerly bypass is actually quite old; it was completed in 1976 to link in with the extension of the M53 through Ellesmere Port. Until the Hawarden bypass and the Ewloe Interchange were built, the A55 Chester bypass was dual carriageway only for a very short length west of the Welsh border before reverting to single carriageway through the village of Broughton. The dual carriageway section of A55 bypassing Broughton and Hawarden, and the Ewloe Interchange itself, were built in the mid-1980's.
The A56 is really only a route for local traffic between the M56 Junction 11 southwest of Warrington and Chester itself. It is only primary for a very short length in a multiplex with the A533 on the edge of Runcorn. Otherwise it is only used by traffic for Frodsham, Helsby and Mickle Trafford. As has happened with other routes where a nearby motorway has superseded them (e.g. A5, A34, A41), the A56 could be downgraded west of M56 Junction 11 until the M56 ends, and in effect multiplex with the M56, then take over the A494 route to Shotwick and the new route over the Flintshire Bridge to meet the A55 at Halkyn. The current A56 from Preston Brook (M56 Junction 11) to Chester could become A5600.
The A55 route should probably remain as it is, with it terminating end on with the M53 east of Chester.