A5080 (Liverpool - Warrington)

This article is about the road from Liverpool to Warrington.
For the other A5080 in Northamptonshire, see A5080 (Northampton).

The A5080 is a medium-length A-road in south Lancashire, running between Liverpool and Warrington.

Route

The road starts in the Liverpool suburb of Old Swan at traffic lights where the A5047 TOTSOs. It heads east, initially primary D2, the main road out of the city to the east. It's just a shame the road is lined with houses on both sides. Soon the Rocket is reached, a complicated, and busy, modified diamond GSJ with the A5058 eastern bypass where there are a couple of sets of lights for the A5080. Just round the corner the road turns into the M62 at its J4, with the A5080 (and non-motorway traffic) having to TOTSO.

The motorway runs between the two carriageways of the now-non primary A5080 for a short distance, before the eastbound carriageway passes Broad Green station and bears right underneath the elevated motorway to rejoin the westbound carriageway. The road now becomes S2 as it runs alongside the motorway as far as the roundabout at J5. The M62 is crossed and the road continues east through Roby to a roundabout on the B5199 on the edge of Huyton. Here the A5080 turns right to pass to the south of town.

Cronton

The road remains residential until just before it reaches the M62 for the final time at J6, a large roundabout with the M62 below and the M57/A5300 above; it's therefore slightly annoying that we have to give way to the roundabout. On the far side we enter open country and cross the flat fields to reach the village of Cronton. There's a brief rural section on the far side before we enter the northern suburbs of Widnes. The road skirts the northern edge of town and crosses the A557 at an unusual GSJ. There's then another short rural section before we reach Penketh, on the western edge of Warrington. We end on the near side of town at a roundabout on the A562.

History

The A5080 came into being in the mid-1920s when the B5180 was upgraded to Class I status. Allowing for bypasses, the A5080 still has the same route today. However, possibly on its creation and certainly by the 1950s, its western end was on the A57 London Road in Liverpool city centre. The original number of this section of road was the A5047 and it has now got that number back.

Before the construction of the M62, the section of A5080 that today runs alongside the M62 west of junction 6 was a suburban dual carriageway with houses on both sides. To allow construction of the M62, the eastbound carriageway was removed and the houses on the north side demolished.