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According to local news, there are plans abound to make the dock road the main trunk route into Liverpool from the south. This will mean building what they call a "super hightway", though this is merely dualling the dock road from Sefton Street southwards. The article seems to suggest linking it up eventually with the new Mersey crossing, though if they're using Jericho Lane, it'll just put them back onto Aigburth road but only further down. Time will tell, I suppose. What does worry me is the '10km toll-route' thing. I hope that's just poor reporting, as they can't toll Riverside Drive, as there's many businesses and residential streets directly off it.
Here's the article.
Super highway plan to tackle traffic chaos
A CONTINUOUS “super highway” stretching from Liverpool city centre to the M56, south of Runcorn, will be built as part of a massive roads shake-up revealed yesterday.
Heavily-used Aigburth Road and Park Road – the key route into the city from south Liverpool – will be replaced by a new dual-carriageway from Aigburth Vale along Riverside Drive to Sefton Street, if a new proposal now being investigated is backed. And, in Cheshire, the Speke-Widnes link road will be the starting point for a new £390m, 10km toll-route that will take in a stunning new 440ft high river crossing between Runcorn and Widnes, linking close to the M56.
Added together, the projects would see an unbroken two or three-lane route, starting close to Kings Dock on Liverpool’s waterfront, merging into a widened Riverside Drive towards Aigburth Vale and the city boundary at Speke.
There, the link road will lead to the new bridge, ending on Runcorn’s Central Expressway close to the M56 interchange.
Halton Council is to start a 14-week public consultation exercise about its bridge proposals, while Liverpool City Council will be told on Friday about the widened Riverside Drive.
That scheme would see Aigburth Road, from Aigburth Vale and Park Road, demoted to a local route, with the four-lane Riverside Drive upgraded to the A561 trunk road, part of the national main road network. In a re- port to the council’s executive board, Aig- burth Road is listed as one of Merseyside’s top 10 congestion hot-spots.
The report reveals a feasibility study is now under way to investigate the dualling of Riverside Drive and Jericho Lane from Aigburth Vale towards the city centre.
The scheme is one of the most radical and ambitious in a set of proposals put forward to tackle the most congested routes in Merseyside – more than half of them in Liverpool.
It is the most scenic route into Liverpool, I must say.
I don't see that as being much more than 3 miles long, though.
As we have discussed before, if the new bridge is tolled, and tolling is extended to the old bridge too, which is currently free, total demand will probably be little more than today (maybe even less) and the project will seem a white elephant. The old bridge is free-flowing now apart from in the rush-hour, and tolling will deter off-peak traffic.
We could take a leaf out of Scotland's book on this
“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” – Robert A. Heinlein
If your first post in the link is anything to go by the new bridge should have been open by now. No doubt we will still be in the same position in another 4 years time, like SEMMMS and the other countless schemes that keep getting delayed.
I often use the existing bridge to go to Liverpool whenever there's trouble at Thelwell. I won't be too happy if the only decent free alternative becomes tolled
How would you like your grade separations, Sir? Big and complex.
i wonder... the new rout will most probably be GSJed, because at the moment the rout holds hudreds of split phase, 4 phase signals, and there is no point in having signals on it if it is deemed a super highway. just oversizing the whole thing.
Truvelo wrote:I often use the existing bridge to go to Liverpool whenever there's trouble at Thelwell. I won't be too happy if the only decent free alternative becomes tolled
Well, I believe the plan is to toll both bridges, as tolling just the new one would just mean the vast majority continuing to use the older bridge, defeating the objective. Thus, the only untolled river crossing in the wider city region, shall be removed. I'd sooner we took the Scottish approach with both the bridges and tunnels, but there's no devolution here. Not fair, but you're English, get used to it.
traffic_signals wrote:i wonder... the new rout will most probably be GSJed, because at the moment the rout holds hudreds of split phase, 4 phase signals, and there is no point in having signals on it if it is deemed a super highway. just oversizing the whole thing.
That's just the lingo of local papers. They use ridiculous language such as 'super highway' all the time. A new building over five storeys high is automatically a 'souring skyscraper', a new pedestrian crossing is a 'super crossing', every event or festival is 'world beating'.
I can't see it being sub-motorway standard, unless we're talking more towards Widnes and beyond. Also, all the housing and businesses I've mentioned wouldn't be able to reside off a grade separated freeway. We'll just have to wait for more details, I guess.
I’m fairly confident the 10km (whatever that is in English... ) toll route will be for the new second crossing only, but as Peter says, I just don’t see that being more than a few miles long, five at most. I can only presume that also includes the new road to and from it, but even then that distance seems a little too far.
Truvelo wrote:
I often use the existing bridge to go to Liverpool whenever there’s trouble at Thelwell. I won’t be too happy if the only decent free alternative becomes tolled
Neither will I. We go across to Warrington (or the Gemini Retail Park more specifically) once or twice a month and have used the bridge for quite a number of years now, avoiding Warrington town centre completely. If the old bridge is to be tolled (which I think pretty much all locals are against) along with the new bridge whenever that is constrcuted and opened, I will have no choice but to crawl through Warrington town centre again - adding to the heavy congestion already there. I think traffic levels would increase in the town centre if the old bridge was to be tolled too, I'd put good money on it. At worst, I;d take a very long detour over the Thelwall viaduct and then off the M62 at junction 8, which is more or less just outside the retail park.
To be honest, it wasn't needed and the only reason why you would build such a thing would be to divert traffic away from Aigburth and Toxteth.
Anyway, traffic heading for the City Centre and Wirral from the South East corner of the City (ie the Airport and Speke) is directed down Jericho Lane/Riverside Drive by way of improved signage which has gone up in the last few years or so.
As if the council didnt have enough trouble with Hall Lane!
Well, I think one of the ideas was to take traffic away from Dingle/Toxteth. I personally feel trunking the promenade would have made sense as firstly, there's more space to dual it, so no huge demolition (unlike Edge Lane), secondly, it's by far the most scenic into the downtown area, perhaps after the ferry. Also, it would take traffic from Park Road, which is hardly a bad thing, in my opinion. The other option was to dual Park Road instead, which would almost certainly involve a lot of demolition of it's many terraces and street fronts.
Unfortunately. Have you clicked on the link since? I had a wonderful conversation with one of my old 'friends'. I'm not proud of it, but I was on the defensive and had to give that bitter old man a bit of his own vitriolic medicine.
