[W]hether you’re travelling from Cumbria to Cheshire or Merseyside to Manchester, drivers across the North West will benefit from a £104 million makeover of the region’s motorways and major A roads.
Highways England has announced plans to improve key routes across the region to provide smoother, safer and more reliable journeys, with work due to take place within the next 12 months.
A total of 212 miles of motorway and trunk road lanes will be resurfaced – equivalent to the distance from Manchester to Glasgow, 377 miles of white lines will be painted and 42 miles of safety barriers will be installed.
The work will also include upgrading over 9 miles of drainage and replacing nearly 6 miles of boundary fences, as well as new cycling schemes, better pedestrian crossings and initiatives to reduce noise levels for people who live close to major roads.
John Lyssejko, North West Service Delivery Team Leader at Highways England, said: “These improvements will benefit the hundreds of thousands of drivers who travel on our roads every day.
“This work is being carried out in addition to major road projects across the region, such as the smart motorway schemes, which will help cut journey times and improve the flow of traffic.
“We’ll do everything we can to minimise disruption by carrying out work overnight when possible so that drivers can experience better journeys across the North West.”
Work is already underway on a £3 million scheme to improve journeys and safety at one of the North West’s busiest motorway junctions – Switch Island in Merseyside, where the M57, M58 and 3 A roads all join together.
Improvements include changes to the road layout and lane markings, new barriers between carriageways, coloured high friction surfaces, better signs and a new 400 metre shared cycle path.
Airport-runway-style LED lights are also being installed in the road surface which will light up when traffic lights turn green so drivers can clearly see which lane they should follow.
Work is also taking place on a £1.5 million project to resurface an 11-mile stretch of the eastbound carriageway on the M55 between junction 4 at Blackpool and junction 1 at Broughton.
Contractors have now completed work between junctions 4 and 3, and began resurfacing the carriageway between junctions 3 and 1 on Monday 4 June.
Details on other improvement and maintenance schemes will be released throughout the year, ahead of work starting.
