A554

Tower Road bascule bridge, Birkenhead Docks

The A554 at the top end of the Wirral peninsula connects Bidston to Birkenhead by a rather roundabout U-shaped route.

The road leaves the A553 in Bidston at the west end of Birkenhead, heads north as a dual carriageway (dating from the 1970s), passes under the end of the M53 at J1, and meets the A551 at a grade-separated junction before going up to the top of the Wirral at New Brighton promenade – with loads of big roundabouts on the way. I've been up to New Brighton a few times: it's a fantastic bit of road this, especially when empty, when the locals seem to use this as an unofficial racetrack. You can also see where some have chosen to go straight across the grassy roundabouts rather than round them.

At the end of the seafront the A554 heads back south through Wallasey, meeting the A5028 and A5139, and taking in the Seacombe Ferry terminal on the way, before becoming primary and re-entering Birkenhead across the swing bridge and running through the docks area, where it provides access to the Birkenhead - Belfast ferry terminal. Back in Birkenhead, the road (Tower Road/Canning Street) meets the A5029 and A552 and ends where the A41 appears to stop: at the Woodside Ferry.

A junction without priority

In 2021, a junction just to the south of the ferry terminal was converted from a signalised crossroads into a junction without priorities, with a circular art pattern painted on the road.

History

1969 - Before the extension to the M53

1972 The extension

Originally the road ran only from New Brighton to Seacombe. The western extension, a bypass of Wallasey and A551, utilised the existing unclassified King's Parade and Bayswater Road to the Greenleas Road junction to connect to a new, mile long, dual carriageway to M53 J1 Bidston Island. The motorway opened on 1 February 1972.

There was a later southwards extension from M53 J1 to connect to A553 in Bidston sometime between 1975 and 1978 per Philips Road Atlases.