A55 road

The A55, also known as the North Wales Expressway (Welsh: Gwibffordd Gogledd Cymru) and the Chester to Bangor Trunk Road, is a major road in Britain. Its entire length is a dual carriageway primary route, with the exception of the point where it crosses the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait. All junctions are grade separated except for two roundabouts — one east of Penmaenmawr and one in Llanfairfechan. The road originally ran from Chester to Bangor but was extended parallel to the A5 across Anglesey right into Holyhead Docks in 2001. The road improvements have been part funded with European money, under the Trans-European Networks programme, as the route is designated part of Euroroute E22 (Holyhead - Leeds - Amsterdam - Hamburg - Malmö - Riga - Moscow - Perm - Ekaterinburg - Ishim).

Route

The Chester Southerly Bypass

The A55 begins at the end of the M53 motorway near Chester, where it is known as the Chester Southerly Bypass, crossing the River Dee and the Welsh border before passing close to Broughton then passing north of Buckley , Penyffordd and Northop. There is a major climb westbound between Broughton and Buckley (Junctions 35a to 35) though with no crawler lane. Junction 34/33b is point at which the A494 converges and then diverges with the A55. The road briefly has a three-lane section as westbound traffic from Queensferry can leave towards Mold. In the eastbound direction another short three-lane section allows vehicles to join the A494 or exit onto the A55 to Chester. Traffic taking the A55 into England must negotiate a tight 270 degree speed-limited single lane curve to climb up and over the A55/A494. Plans to upgrade the A494 between this junction at Ewloe and Queensferry were rejected by the Welsh Assembly Government on 26 March 2008 due to their scale.

Castlereagh Highway

The Castlereagh Highway is a state highway in New South Wales, Australia, also extending into Queensland. It runs between Lithgow, through central-western NSW then to the Carnarvon Highway in Queensland.

Route

The highway was extended past Gilgandra to include state route 86 in October 1997. As such the Castlereagh Highway starts just outside Lithgow at a junction with the Great Western Highway and runs in a north-westerly direction through Ilford and the junctions of Bathurst-Ilford Road and Bylong Valley Way, through the regional centre of Mudgee and Gulgong. From there it joins with the Golden Highway through Dunedoo, then branches off in Dunedoo, continuing past Gilgandra until it reaches the Queensland border via Walgett at Hebel. From there it continues to the outskirts of St George where it terminates with the Carnarvon Highway.

The highway was signed National Route 55 in 1974 north of Gilgandra, and State Route 86 south of Gilgandra. QLD however signed the Carnarvon Highway as National Route 55 rather than the Castlereagh Highway, causing a major discrepancy for many years in that National Route 55 met the QLD border at Hebel but abruptly begun again over 100km east along the QLD border at Mungindi. The Queensland Road Department changed this and signed National Route 55 over the border north to Charters Towers in later years. This route was soon replaced with the A7 and A55 designations throughout QLD in 2005, and the B55 designation in NSW during 2013 to Gilgandra and then south to Lithgow, replacing both State Route 86 and National Route 55.{1}

A55 road (Northern Ireland)

The A55 road forms Belfast's outer-ring road.

Description

A55 links many of the main arterial routes within the city as well as creating a bypass of the often congested city centre and problematic A12 Westlink. Large sections of the route in east Belfast have been upgraded to dual carriageway standard with at-grade traffic light controlled junctions, together with off road cycle paths alongside. However many sections (e.g. through Knock and from the Shaw's Bridge (Belvoir) to the M1) remain single carriageway, with four lanes of traffic. (Though the section through Knock has a proposed upgrade going through the final designs stages as of January 2009.) Despite this, all of the route in the west and north of the city (with the notable exception of the Monagh Bypass near Andersonstown) is nothing more than a single carriageway two-lane road based on local city streets and arterial routes.

Proposed upgrades

The lack of investment directed towards an upgrade for these sections of the city's ring road can be explained by a lack of demand, relatively lower traffic levels and few industrial sites in comparison to those of the south and east. However, in an attempt to attract inwards investment into the area the West Belfast & Greater Shankill Task Force has laid out a plan (publicised in late 2008) which proposes to extend and improve the route; extending from the Monagh Bypass as far north as the A52 Crumlin Road in the northwest of the city.