A4053

This article is about the Coventry Inner Ring Road.
For the original route in Cardiff, see A4053 (Cardiff).

For detailed information about this topic, see Roads.org.uk: Coventry Ring Road, The bright lights of Coventry

Junction 8

The A4053 is the number given to Coventry's inner ring road, which opened in stages between 1962 and 1974. Eight out of the nine junctions are grade separated, with Junction 1 in the north being a flat roundabout, although contemporary documents from the time the road was planned hint that a grade separated junction may have been considered here too.

Due to the average junction spacing of just over 430 yards per junction, and a large range of widths (from 2 lanes each way to 5 lanes each way), there is a lot of weaving on the road. As a result, users of the road are encouraged to stay in the offside lane to allow this weaving to take place. Visitors to Coventry who are unfamiliar with this set up often find themselves being undertaken or cut in front of, which has given the road a somewhat fearsome reputation. The mainline speed limit is 40 mph throughout, although slip roads have a mix of 20 mph and 30 mph limits.

In the late 2010s, Junction 6 was demolished and reconstructed to provide a shared space above a new tunnel as part of the wider regeneration works to the railway station. Prior to this, there were rumours that the section between J1 and J4 could be removed to open up development land as happened in Birmingham with the loss of the A4400. This has not come to fruition and starting in 2017, the J1-3 section of the ring road was extensively refurbished.

Naming

The number A4053 appears on a single Route Confirmation Sign at junction 4; the ring road is more commonly referred to by its individual sections (which are not quite aligned between junctions), which are listed here in a clockwise direction;

• Ringway Swanswell
• Ringway Whitefriars
• Ringway St Johns
• Ringway St Patricks
• Ringway Queens
• Ringway Rudge
• Ringway Hill Cross
• Ringway St Nicholas