A34 road

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A34 road
Direction	North - South
Start	Salford
Primary destinations1	Manchester Congleton Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke-on-Trent Stone Stafford Cannock Walsall Birmingham Solihull Oxford Newbury
End	Winchester
Roads joined
Euroroute(s)	E 05
Notes Primary destinations as specified by the Department for Transport.

The A34 is a major road in England. It runs from the A6042 in Salford to Winchester in Hampshire. It forms a large part of the major trunk route from Southampton, via Oxford, to Birmingham, The Potteries and Manchester.

[edit] Route

The road is in two sections. The northern section runs south through Manchester and Cheadle, and bypasses Wilmslow before passing through Alderley Edge, Congleton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the southern suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent. It then continues south via Stone, Stafford, Cannock and Walsall, passes through the middle of Birmingham (where it briefly merges with the A41), before meeting the M42 motorway at junction 4 south of Solihull.

The southern section begins some 50 miles to the south, at junction 9 of the M40 motorway, ten miles north of Oxford. It continues south as the western part of the Oxford Ring Road, crossing the River Thames on the A34 Road Bridge. It then bypasses Abingdon and Newbury before finally finishing just east of Winchester, at junction 9 of the M3 motorway. This part of the A34 forms the E05 European route. It is dual carriageway throughout.

Together with parts of the M3 and the M40, the A34 forms an important route carrying freight from Southampton to the Midlands. Because of the volume of traffic, bypasses were built along this route – at Newbury on the A34, and at Twyford Down near Winchester on the M3 – but these were controversial for environmental reasons. Instead of cutting a short road tunnel through Twyford Down, the entire escarpement was carved-out and the motorway placed through it.

In 2004 works were carried out, at a cost of £38 million, to allow the road to continue without being interrupted by a roundabout at junction 13 of the M4 motorway, which had caused a 'bottleneck'.

The A34 near Newbury.

The A34 looking North towards Didcot, in Oxfordshire, with the power station visible

[edit] Future plans

A bypass of Alderley Edge is planned. Funding of £48 million was committed by the Department for Transport on July 29 2008, allowing work to begin in August 2008.^[1][2] The Highways Agency is currently in the final stages of developing a scheme for an interim improvement of the M40 junction 9 southbound exit slip road. The work is planned to take place in September 2009.

The scheme will provide three lanes for traffic wishing to join the A34 southbound from the M40. Following completion of the work, the Highways Agency will conduct a study looking at the benefits the work has delivered.

[edit] History

The original (1922) route of the A34 was Winchester to Oxford, much shorter than it is today.^[3] It was extended to Manchester in 1935, replacing part of the A42 (Oxford to Birmingham through Shipston-on-Stour, Stratford-upon-Avon and Henley-in-Arden), A455 (Birmingham to Stafford), part of the A449 (Stafford to Newcastle under Lyme) and A526 (Newcastle to Manchester).

By 1953 the route was as follows:^[4]

When the Oxford Ring Road was completed to the west of Oxford in 1962, the old route through the city was renumbered the A4144.

On completion of the Abingdon Bypass in the 1970s, the old route from the Oxford Ring Road through Abingdon and Steventon to Chilton was partly declassified (for 2 miles) and the rest renumbered A4183, B4017, A4130 and A4185.

In 1991, shortly after the completion of the M40 motorway, the road between Oxford and Solihull was renumbered. Between Chipping Norton and Solihull the road lost its primary route status and was renumbered A3400, and south of Chipping Norton the route became part of an extended A44. The A34 was diverted north from the Oxford Ring Road to the M40 along parts of the former routes of the A43 and A421. Much of the long-distance traffic carried by what is now the A3400 now uses the M40 to Birmingham, and the M42 and M6 to by-pass the city.

When the Newbury Bypass was opened in 1998, the old route through Newbury became part of the A339 and the B4640.

[edit] References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

[edit] External links

• The Highways Agency Management Strategy for Bicester to Winchester.
• The Highways Agency A34-M4 junction improvements.
• A34 Stratford Road red route, Birmingham

v • d • e A roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain road numbering scheme A3 · A30 · A31 · A32 · A33 · A34 · A35 · A36 · A37 · A38 · A39 A301 · A303 · A307 · A308 · A316 · A329 · A337 · A338 · A340 · A342 · A344 · A345 · A346 · A350 · A354 · A361 · A363 · A368 · A369 · A370 · A371 · A374 · A379 · A386 · A390 A3036 · A3054 · A3055 · A3090 · A3203 · A3204 · A3220 · A3400 List of A roads in Zone 3 · List of B roads in Zone 3