A154

This article is about the current A154, which runs from Trimley to Felixstowe Town Centre.
For the original A154, which ran from Mablethorpe to Swineshead Bridge and is now part of the A52, see A154 (Lincolnshire).

Route

The A154 passes over Gulpher Road

As part of the huge expansion of the port of Felixstowe during the containerisation era, it became necessary to build a direct road into the docks from Trimley, on the outskirts of Felixstowe, avoiding the town. The new road took the number of the main road to Felixstowe from the Midlands, then still known as the A45, but since renumbered as the A14. The rump of the original road, going through Felixstowe itself, was renumbered as the A154.

The A154 starts at a roundabout, going straight on where the new road turns right, where earthworks suggest that a flyover was planned for traffic avoiding the docks. It first skirts the town to reach another roundabout. Here the A1021 goes straight on, leading to the town centre, whilst the A154 turns right onto Garrison Lane to cross a railway bridge just west of the station and pass through the outskirts of the town, rejoining the A1021 near the olde bus station which is where a Lidl now stands.. Interestingly, neither of these roads actually reach the seafront although the B1082, met at the next roundabout, does.

There is a straight run now, parallel with the railway that serves the docks. We reach a signalised crossroads on Langer Road, where matters become complicated. Most maps show both straight ahead and right to be part of the A154, although some show the road ahead as now unclassified. Prior to the inauguration of the A14 in the 1990s, both these roads were the A45 and the A154 ended here.

Right leads across a busy railway level crossing to a roundabout at one of the modern entrances to the docks (which is also the end of the new A14). It then continues to the other dock entrance, where a sharp turn right leads along a dual carriageway to a GSJ back on the A14 again.

Straight on along Langer Road lies the old road, leading to the Landguard Fort guarding the entrance to the Harwich Harbour and the Orwell estuary, and the original entrance to the docks. After the road to Landguard Fort turns off to the left the A154 ends in uncompromising fashion at the end of the public road at a locked level crossing gate. The original line of the A45 continued to the river - but this route has now been destroyed; the river bank has also been moved.

Original Author(s): T1(M)